(which is about equivalent to a Welsh jury
finding a man guilty of forgery because he
can't drink nine quarts of ale at a sitting),
and solemnly banished him the town. Young
Fritz—who had a pretty fortune of his own
in Marks banco—went to Strasburg; where he
plunged into the delirious dissipation of that
Alsatian capital, to the extent of spending
all his Marks banco among the breweries
and the broom-girls. Then he went to play
the violin, for a livelihood, in a theatre at
Brussels, and then he went to the assistant
architect of the cathedral of his native town—
whose name I need not mention, your ears
being polite. So Walter Biber keeps the König
von Cockaign all to himself, and sits in his
musty little counting-house, like a son of
Arachne—a big, bloated, cruel, morose spider
—spinning his webs of rechnungs, or hotel bills,
for unoffending travellers day after day.

The house is one big, lumbering, furniture-
crowded nest of low-ceilinged parlours and
bed-rooms, like cells in an ante-diluvian
beehive. The beds surpass in size and
clumsiness the English four-posters, on which Mr.
Albert Smith pours out so many vials of
wrath. As to the furniture, it is so heavy,
clumsy, close-packed, impossible to move;
that you are compelled to thread a winding
labyrinth between chairs, tables, sofas, and
cabinets, before you can accomplish the
journey to bed. When you do reach that
great mausoleum of Morpheus, you are stifled
beneath an immense feather-bed, in
addition to the one you lie on: when you lay
your head on the pillow, surging billows
sprayed with feathers rise on either side of
you, and engulf you; and there you lie,
panting, stewing, seething, frittering into
an oleaginous nonentity as Geoffrey Crayon's
uncle—that bold dragoon—did in the inn
at Antwerp. You don't sleep. I should like
to see you try it. First, you are asphixiated;
then, you have incipient apoplexy.
Afterwards, you have the night-mare. The
König von Cockaign, in his full suit of
armour comes and sits on your chest, and
scorches you with his red nose. Then
Frederick the Wicked brings the dome of
the cathedral, and claps it on your head,
searing your eyeballs meanwhile with red-hot
knitting-needles, Walter Biber sitting at the
foot of the bed, all the time, chanting the
rechnung of the hideous morrow to you, to
the tune of the Dead March in Saul. The
rats, the ghosts in white, the vampire bats,
the spiders in the bed-curtains, and the ten
thousand unbidden, unseen guests in brown
great coats, who do not smell of attar of roses,
but who feast upon your carcase, and suck
your blood, need scarcely be mentioned; they
are part of the bill of fare of the König von
Cockaign. Confound the King of Cockaigne!

The charges are abominable, the cooking
intolerable, the waiters sleepy and clumsy.
There is an odour of stale tobacco smoke
in the very bread. The beer is sour and
mawkish. There is nothing to read in the
coffee-room except a Lieberschweinsgartener
Zeitung three weeks old, and printed on
paper that we would not wrap a pound of
mutton candles in at home. The wine is
inferior vinegar, bottled to be a standing
libel on the Rhine and the Moselle. There
is a hideous old woman with a beard,
perpetually peeling carrots under the gateway.
She ought to be in one of Gerard Dow's
pictures, where she would be at home; but,
in the flesh, she is unbearable. There are
two-score repetitions of the old women crouching
under red umbrellas at the base of the
cathedral-wall, with monstrous cabbages, and
radishes like yams for sale. If you dispute
Walter Biber's hotel-charges, he threatens you
with the Polizei-Bureau, and half hints that
you are a political refugee recently escaped
from Spandau. You have been told that in
cases of extortion you can appeal to the
burgomaster. The burgomaster is Walter
Biber's uncle. Perhaps the senate will pick
a German quarrel with you. You make
haste to pay the accursed rechnung (after
having changed a five-pound note at a Jew
banker, who swindles you out of about
eleven per cent. for variations of exchange,
pestiferates you with garlic, and calls you
"my lord") and make haste to escape from
Lieberschweinsgarten, with a firm resolve
never to visit it again.

Of the third class of German hotels I am
not qualified to speak, inasmuch as I have
never been in any of them. From Mr. Albert
Smith's account of the Drei Mohren—the
Three Moors—at Augsburg, it is an hostelry
which, however deficient in comfort, must
approach perfection in the cellar department.
Only listen to the recital of only a few
of the wines which are in bottle, of
prime quality and in first-rate condition.
At the Drei Mohren you can have Schloss
Saalecker, Oberingelheimer Walpazheimer-
Kirchwein, Drachenfelser Drachenblut,
Liebfraumilch, Cantenac de la Domaine du
Prieuré, Grand Larose du Baron Sarget
Beethman, Muscat de Rivesaltes, St. Perrey
mousseux, Soleras generoso, Canariensekt von
Teneriffe, Witle Constantia von Löwenhof,
Roode Groote Constantia von Cloote (a
terrible Turk of a wine, I should think, this),
Erlauer-Magyar Korona-bor, Neczmély,
Refosco d'lsola, Aleatico di Ponte a Marino,
Est Est Est di Montefiascone (the well-known
ecclesiastical neat wine), Falernum Calenum,
Calabria di diamante, Lwadia von Heraclia
bei Athen, Cypro-Zoopi, Tenedos Leucophrys,
and Vinum sanctum Bethlehemitanum! I
long for an opportunity to put the promises
of the Three Moors to the test.