MY FRIEND THE DUTCHMAN.
"And you will positively marry her, if she will have you?"
"Not a doubt of either. Before this day fortnight she shall be Madame Van Haubitz."
"You will make her your wife without acquainting her with your true position?"
"Indeed will I. My very position requires it. There's no room for a scruple. She expects to live on my fortune; thinks to make a great catch of the rich Dutchman. Instead of that I shall spend her salary. The old story; going out for wool and returning shorn."
The conversation of which this is the concluding fragment, occurred in the public room of the Hotel de Hesse, in the village of Homburg on the Hill—an insignificant handful of houses, officiating as capital of the important landgravate of Hesse-Homburg. The table-d'hôte had been over some time; the guests had departed to repose in their apartments until the hour of evening promenade should summon them to the excellent band of music, provided by the calculating liberality of the gaming-house keepers, and to loiter round the brunnens of more or less nauseous flavour, the pretext of resort to this rendezvous of idlers and gamblers. The waiters had disappeared to batten on the broken meats from the public table, and to doze away the time till the approach of supper renewed their activity. My interlocutor, with whom I was alone in the deserted apartment, was a man of about thirty years of age, whose dark hair and mustaches, marked features, spare person, and complexion bronzed by a tropical sun, entitled him to pass for a native of southern Europe, or even of some more ardent clime. Nevertheless he answered to the very Dutch patronymic of Van Haubitz, and was a native of Holland, in whose principal city his father was a banker of considerable wealth and financial influence.
It was towards the close of a glorious August, and for two months I had been wandering in Rhine-land. Not after the fashion of deluded Cockneys, who fancy they have seen the Rhino when they have careered from Cologne to Mannheim astride of a steam-engine, gaping at objects passed as soon as perceived; drinking and paying for indifferent vinegar as Steinberger-Cabinet, eating vile dinners on the decks of steamers, and excellent ones in the capital hotels which British cash and patronage have raised upon the banks of the flower of German streams. On the contrary, I had early dispensed with the aid of steam, to wander on foot, with the occasional assistance of a lazy country diligence or rickety einspanner, through the many beautiful districts that lie upon either bank of the river; pedestrianising in Rhenish Bavaria, losing myself in the Odenwald, and pausing, when occasion offered, to pick a trout out of the numerous streamlets that dash and meander through dell and ravine, on their way to swell the waters of old Father Rhine. At last, weary of solitude—scarcely broken by an occasional gossip with a heavy German boor, village priest, or strolliug student,—I thirsted after the haunts of civilisation, and found myself, within a day of the appearance of the symptom, installed in a luxurious hotel in the free city of Frankfort on the Maine. But Frankfort at that season is deserted, save by passing tourists, who escape as fast as possible from its lifeless streets and sun-baked pavements; so, after glancing over an English newspaper at the Casino, taking one stroll in the beautiful garden surrounding the city, and another through the Jew-quarter—always interesting and curious, although any thing but savoury at that warm season,—I gathered together my baggage and was off to Homburg. There I could not complain of solitude, of deserted streets and shuttered windows. It seemed impossible that the multitude of gaily dressed belles and cavaliers, English, French, German, and Russ, who, from six in the morning until sunset, lounged and flirted on the walks, watered themselves at the fountains, and perilled their complexions in the golden sunbeams, could ever bestow themselves in the two
