At Auxerre they left the water-coach, and proceeded by a hired conveyance to Dijon, where they met several English, Irish, and Scotch gentry at the coffee-house, and were reminded of London by the garden called Vauxhall, hard by the ramparts. So they went through Burgundy, drinking the wine, exchanging civilities with the well-fed monks, and partaking everywhere of the fat of the land. By way of Auxonne, a town small but fortified, and Dole, with its Roman vestiges, they neared the Swiss frontier at Besançon, then noted for its university, its hospital, its large garrison containing among others the regiment of the King, its perpetual religious processions, its frequent suicides of lovers in the river Doube, and its soldiers' duels.
Thence they went to Basle, lodging at the inn of the Three Kings, and dining by a window that looked across the Rhine to smiling plains; thence past miles of tobacco fields to Strasbourg; thence across the Rhine and to Rastadt; thence by way of Carlsruhe and Speyer to Mannheim, whose straight streets, crossing at right angles, reminded Dick of Philadelphia. Over a flat country where there were few houses but palaces and peasants' cottages,—for in most small German states the gentry lived in the capitals and the merchant class in towns,—they went by carriage to the ecclesiastical capital, Mayence, which swarmed with priests, many of them rich and gay-looking, and not a few openly tipsy with Rhenish wine. From there Lord George and his secretary proceeded to Frankfort, notable for its stately houses covered with red stucco, its spacious streets, its well-dressed and well-mannered people, its multitude of Jews.
From the free imperial city they drove to Marburg, in the landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel, a hilly, well-wooded country, with many fertile valleys and fields. Its landgrave, Frederick II., was one of the richest and most powerful of all the German princes, and was then in close relations with England, which fact gave him a mild interest in Lord George's eyes; but there was to that fact a circumstance with a different interest for Dick Wetheral,—it was this Landgrave that sold his troops to England, and thousands of them were even now in America fighting against Dick's countrymen.
Pushing on from Marburg as rapidly as the bad roads and the stolid, smoking German postilion would let them go, the young gentlemen entered Cassel, then no longer a walled city, on a pleasant autumn evening, little foreseeing, as they drove in from the southwest and set foot before the hotel in the round platz near the Landgrave's palace, that in this capital a very remarkable drama was about to open in the life of Dick Wetheral.
The next morning Dick stayed in the hotel to write Lord George's journal up to date, while his lordship went out to visit the English resident. Before noon Lord George returned.
"Lay aside your pen, my dear fellow," he said to Dick. "We are to dine at the palace with their highnesses, the Landgrave and Landgravine. Make haste, you've barely time to change your clothes."
"But I am merely a secretary," objected Dick, who had no desire to enjoy the hospitality of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel.
"So much the more reason why you should see the Landgrave's court, to write my description of it. Besides, no one will know you are my secretary as well as my friend."
"But no one is permitted to appear at German courts who isn't noble."
"That rule of etiquette is observed only towards the natives, not towards strangers, and particularly not towards Englishmen. Come, this is a gala-day, and we shall go to the masquerade to-night as well. I must have at least one court dinner and court ball in my journal of travels, to be in the fashion. To-morrow we shall leave Cassel, which doesn't interest me, and go by way of Magdeburg to Berlin."