and highness, and she's no more
a princess than you or I. She is a little milliner in the street she
mentioned, and she dances at Mabille and Chateau Rouge."

Hearing these two familiar names, the princess looked hard at Lord
Talboys, but he never lost countenance; and at the next station Lady
Kicklebury rushed out of the smoking-carriage and returned to her own
place; where, I dare say, Captain Hicks and Miss Fanny were delighted
once more to have the advantage of her company and conversation. And so
they went back to England, and the Kickleburys were no longer seen on
the Rhine. If her ladyship is not cured of hunting after great people,
it will not be for want of warning: but which of us in life has not had
many warnings: and is it for lack of them that we stick to our little
failings still?

When the Kickleburys were gone, that merry little Rougetnoirbourg did
not seem the same place to me, somehow. The sun shone still, but the
wind came down cold from the purple hills; the band played, but their
tunes were stale; the promenaders paced the alleys, but I knew all their
faces: as I looked out of my windows in the Tissisch house upon the
great blank casements lately occupied by the Kickleburys, and remembered
what a pretty face I had seen looking thence but a few days back, I
cared not to look any longer; and though Mrs. Milliken did invite me to
tea, and talked fine arts and poetry over the meal, both the beverage
and the conversation seemed very weak and insipid to me, and I fell
asleep once in my chair opposite that highly cultivated being. "Let us
go back, Lankin," said I to the Serjeant, and he was nothing loth;
for most of the other serjeants, barristers, and Queen's counsel were
turning homewards, by this time, the period of term time summoning them
all to the Temple.

So we went straight one day to Biberich on the Rhine, and found the
little town full of Britons, all trooping home like ourselves. Everybody
comes, and everybody goes away again, at about the same time. The
Rhine innkeepers say that their customers cease with a single day
almost:--that in three days they shall have ninety, eighty, a hundred
guests; on the fourth, ten or eight. We do as our neighbors do. Though
we don't speak to each other much when we are out a-pleasuring, we take
our holiday in common, and go back to our work in gangs. Little Biberich
was so full, that Lankin and I could not get rooms at the large inns
frequented by other