After marching all night, however, through a drenching rain, if we had presented ourselves at the railway station as we then were, our appearance would have excited suspicion. We had taken the precaution of bringing with us from the prison shirts, brushes, blacking, and, in short, everything necessary to our toilet. In a place of concealment we carefully brushed up and dressed ourselves to the best of our ability; and when, at daylight, we presented ourselves at the railway station, we were clean and tidy, and appeared to have come from some place very near. I had brought a book away with me from the prison, and this I carried under my arm to give myself the look of a traveller. On our way to the railway station we saw three gendarmes running towards us, gun in hand. Without faltering we walked coolly on, and the gendarmes, as we came up, politely stepped aside to let us pass. We took the train for a small port in Brittany, and in the evening succeeded in getting on board an English vessel. We were saved!
XLIX.
THE GAMBLING HELLS OF GERMANY.[5]
THE FOUR GREAT SPAS.—DESCRIPTION OF BADEN, HOMBURG, WIESBADEN, AND EMS.—ROULETTE AND ROUGE-ET-NOIR.—SPLENDOR OF THE SALOONS.—THE PERSONS WHO FREQUENT THEM.—PROFITS AND PECULIARITIES OF THE DIRECTION.—THE PHILOSOPHY OF GAMBLING.—WHY PLAYERS LOSE.—STRANGE SUPERSTITION OF BETTORS.—THE INVALIDS.—DROLL SCENES AT THE PUMP-ROOM.—THE MAN WITH A SNAKE IN HIS STOMACH.—THE ROBUST HYPOCHONDRIAC.
The best known and the most popular of all the fashionable and gambling watering-places in Europe are Baden-Baden, Homburg, Wiesbaden, and Ems.
[5] The gambling spas of Germany, but not those of other countries, have been closed since Chapters XLIX. and L. were written; but the chapters have been left in their original form, as the present is a better tense for description than the past.
The first, a town of some seven thousand inhabitants, is delightfully situated in a valley of the Black Forest, on a small stream known as the Oehlbach, eighteen miles from Carlsruhe, in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Homburg von der Hohe, having a population of about five thousand, is the capital of the Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg, and may be considered a suburb of Frankfort on the Maine, as it is only nine miles from that city. Wiesbaden, fourteen miles west of Frankfort, contains nearly twenty-five thousand people, and is the capital of the Duchy of Nassau. This pleasant city is on the Salzbach, an affluent of the Rhine, and at the foot of the delightful Taunus Mountains, its situation and climate being almost identical with those of Homburg. Ems, often called Bad-Ems, is a hamlet on the Lahn, fifteen miles north of Wiesbaden. It is also in Nassau; is shut in by hills, has a pleasant terrace along the river, and is surrounded by delightful scenery.
COSMOPOLITANISM OF THE BATHS.