"No-o."
"Well, where do you suppose he will take us?"
"I don't know, and I don't much care," I responded, in desperation.
We settled back upon the cushions. The peace that follows resignation possessed our souls. O, the luxury of that jolting, rattling ride, as we wound in and out among the tortuous streets! A full half hour passed before the dusky old hotel darkened above us, surmounted by "The Three Kings" arrayed in Eastern magnificence, and wearing gilded crowns upon their heads.
Fate had been propitious. This was our destination, without doubt, though we had made a grand mistake as to its location. We descended at the entrance with the air, I trust, of being equal to the occasion. We calmly surveyed the assembled porters, who hastened to seize our satchels and wraps. We demanded a room, and inquired the hour of table d'hôte, as though we had done the same thing a thousand times before. Mrs. K. was right; there was a moral support in that blessed carriage.
Table d'hôte over, we strayed into a pretty salon opening from the salle à manger. Both were crowded—over doors and windows, and within cabinets filling every niche and corner—with quaint specimens of pottery—pitchers, vases, and jars, ancient enough in appearance to have graced the domestic establishment of the original "Three Kings." The glass doors thrown back enticed us upon a long, low balcony, almost swept by the rushing river below—the beautiful Rhine hastening on to its hills and vineyards. We leaned over, smitten with sudden homesickness, and sent a message back to Rolandseck of happy memory.
With the faint shadows of coming twilight we wandered out into the square before the hotel. A line of voitures extended down one side, every one of which was quickened into life at our approach. We paused, with foot upon the step of the first, for the carte always proffered, upon which is the number of the driver and the established rate of fares. He only touched his shiny hat and prepared to gather up his reins.
"O, dear!" we said; "this will never do; we must not go." And we stepped down. The porters upon the hotel steps began to cast inquiring glances. One or two stray passers added their mite of curiosity, when the knight-errant, who always breaks a lance for distressed womanhood, appeared upon the scene. We recognized him at once, though his armor was only a suit of gray tweed, and he wore a fashionable round-topped hat for a casque.
Almost before we knew it, we were seated in the carriage, the carte in our hands, and were slowly crawling out of the square—for a subdued snail-pace is the highest point of speed attained by these public vehicles.
The memory of Basle is as shadowy, dim, delightful, as was that twilight ride. Where we were going, we neither knew nor cared; nor, later, where we had been. We wound in and out the close streets of the old part of the city, full of a busy life so far removed from our own, that it seemed a show, a picture; below the surface we could not penetrate. We rolled along wide avenues where the houses on either side were white as the dust under the wheels. Once in a quiet square, we paused before an old Hôtel de Ville, frescoed in warm, rich colors. Again upon the outskirts of the city, before a monument; but whether it had been erected to hero or saint I cannot now recall. And somewhere, when the dusk was deepening, we found an old church, gray as the shadows enveloping it, with a horseman, spear in hand, cut in bas relief upon one side. What dragon he made tilt against in the darkness we never knew.