I had the tears in my eyes, and felt ready to cry
with vexation. Just then an officer approaching the gates from
within, I addressed my eager supplications in sputtering, stuttering
fragments of German, French, and English to him; and he, laughing
good-naturedly, gave the sentinel the order to admit me; when I made
straight across the great parade-ground, surrounded with the masses
of the huge fortification, to the low parapet wall, whence I beheld
the glorious landscape I had hoped to see, bathed in the sunset--a
vision of splendor, which surpassed even what I had expected, as I
looked down from the dizzy height, over the magnificent river and
its beautiful tributary, and all the near and distant landscape,
melting far away into golden vapory indistinctness. I did not dare
to stay long, having to return again alone; so, thanking my kind
conductor, who had evidently enjoyed my ecstasy at the beauty of his
_Vaterland_, I left the fortress, stopping again at the gate to ask
the name of my friendly sentinel whose resistance to my impetuous
storming of the fort had been as mild and gentle as was consistent
with his resolute refusal to admit me. Having not a scrap of paper
with me, I wrote his name with my pencil on my glove, determined,
when I returned through Coblentz, to bring him some token of my
gratitude for his patient forbearance; and so I ran all the way down
and back to the hotel.

On our return, some weeks after, we visited Ehrenbreitstein with all
the decorous solemnity of decent sight-seeing travellers; and, one
of a party of four, I drove in state, in an open carriage, up the
formidable approach that I had scaled so vehemently before. Duly
armed with admits and permits, and all proper justifications of our
approach, we drove under the huge archway, where stood another
sentinel, and were received with courteous ceremony by some military
gentlemen, under whose escort I leisurely went over the scene of my
first visit, standing again, in more dignified enthusiasm, at the
parapet where I had panted before in the breathless excitement of my
run up the hill, my fight with the sentry, and my victory over him.
Now, having been duly led and conducted and ushered and escorted all
round, as we were about to depart, I begged, as a favor of the
commanding officer, to be allowed to see ag