ent in and
sent out word that her husband was out, and would be gone for an
indefinite period, and that she was engaged. The commissionaire who was
with me--poor devil!--was dreadfully mortified; but I was not very much
astonished, and, indeed, I was treated in much the same manner, or worse,
by a colleague of this pious man in Paris, or rather by his wife.

I believe that what kept me a week in Geneva was the white wine and
trout. At the end of the time I set out to the north, and on the way met
with some literary or professional German, who commended to me the
"Pfisterer-Zunft" or Bakers' Guild as a cheap and excellent hostelry. And
it was curious enough, in all conscience. During the Middle Ages, and
down to a very recent period, the _Zunfte_ or trade-guilds in the Swiss
cities carried it with a high hand. Even the gentlemen could only obtain
rights as citizens by enrolling themselves as the trade of aristocrats. I
had heard of the boy who thought he would like to be bound apprentice to
the king; in Berne he might have been entered for a lower branch of the
business. These guilds had their own local taverns, inns, or _Herbergs_,
where travelling colleagues of the calling might lodge at moderate rates,
but nobody else. However, as time rolled by, these _Zunfte_ or guild-
lodgings were opened to strangers. One of the last which did so was that
of the _Pfister_ or bakers (Latin, _pistor_), and this had only been done
a few weeks ere I went there. As a literary man whom I met on the
ramparts said to me, "That place is still strong in the Middle Age." It
was a quaint old building, and to get to my room I had to cross the great
guild-hall of the Ancient and Honourable Society of Bakers. There were
the portraits of all the Grand Masters of the Order from the fourteenth
or fifteenth century on the walls, and the concentrated antique tobacco-
smoke of as many ages in the air, which, to a Princeton graduate, was no
more than the scent of a rose to a bee.

I could speak a little German--not much--but the degree to which I felt,
sympathised with, and understood everything Deutsch, passeth all words
and all mortal belief. _Sit verbo venia_! But I do not believe that any
human being ever crossed the frontier who had thought himself down, or
rather raised himself up, into Teutonism as I had on so slight a
knowledge of the language, even as a spider throweth up an invisible
thread on high, and then travels on it. Whic