Joubert, who had been speechless for miles, flung up his elbows just as a duck flings up her wings, he gave the horses a cut with the whip, and then he burst out:
"Frankfort. Ah, yes! Frankfort. Do you think I can't smell it? I can smell a German town a league away, just as I can see a German woman a league away, by the size of her feet. Ah, mon Dieu! Come up, Cæsare; come up, Polastron. My God! Frankfort!"
At a hotel, before strangers, in any public place, it was always "Oui, mon Général," "Oui, monsieur"; but alone, with no one to listen, Joubert talked to the General just as the General talked to Joubert. An extraordinary and solid friendship cemented the relationship of master and man ever since that terrible day in the library of the Château de Saluce, when Joubert had torn the pistol from the hand of his master, flung it through the glass of the great window, and, turning from a paid servant into a man tremendous and heroic, had wrestled with him as the angel wrestled with Jacob.
We passed through the suburbs of the town, and then through the Ghetto. You never can imagine how much colour is in dirt till you see the Jews' quarter of Frankfort—how much poetry, and also, how much perfume!
Joubert, who could not speak a word of the Hogs' language—as he was pleased to style the language of Germany—drove on, piercing the narrow streets to the heart of the town, and in the Kaisserstrasse he drew up. The General inquired the way of a policeman, and in five minutes or less we were before the doors of the Hôtel des Hollandaise.
CHAPTER II VON LICHTENBERG
The Hôtel des Hollandaise was situated, I believe, in the Wilhelmstrasse, an old-fashioned inn with a courtyard. It has long vanished, giving place to a more modern building.
Nowadays, when the Continent is inundated with travellers, when you are received at a great hotel with about as much consideration as a pauper is received at a workhouse, it is hard to imagine the old conditions of travel.