soldiers waded for a time
beside our carriage; wonderfully clean and neat: and had such art of
picking their steps, that their foot-gear testified no higher than the
ancle to the muddy pilgrimage these good people found themselves engaged
in.

'That under such circumstances one saw, in ditches, in meadows, in
fields and crofts, dead horses enough, was natural to the case: by and
by, however, you found them also flayed, the fleshy parts even cut away;
sad token of the universal distress.

'Thus we fared on; every moment in danger, at the smallest stoppage
on our own part, of being ourselves tumbled overboard; under which
circumstances, truly, the careful dexterity of our Lisieux could not be
sufficiently praised. The same talent shewed itself at Estain; where we
arrived towards noon; and descried, over the beautiful well-built
little Town, through streets and on squares, around and beside us, one
sense-confusing tumult: the mass rolled this way and that; and, all
struggling forward, each hindered the other. Unexpectedly our carriage
drew up before a stately house in the market-place; master and mistress
of the mansion saluted us in reverent distance.' Dexterous Lisieux,
though we knew it not, had said we were the King of Prussia's Brother!

'But now, from the ground-floor windows, looking over the whole
market-place, we had the endless tumult lying, as it were, palpable. All
sorts of walkers, soldiers in uniform, marauders, stout but sorrowing
citizens and peasants, women and children, crushed and jostled each
other, amid vehicles of all forms: ammunition-wagons, baggage-wagons;
carriages, single, double, and multiplex; such hundredfold miscellany
of teams, requisitioned or lawfully owned, making way, hitting together,
hindering each other, rolled here to right and to left. Horned-cattle
too were struggling on; probably herds that had been put in requisition.
Riders you saw few; but the elegant carriages of the Emigrants,
many-coloured, lackered, gilt and silvered, evidently by the best
builders, caught your eye. (See Hermann and Dorothea (also by Goethe),
Buch Kalliope.)

'The crisis of the strait however arose further on a little; where the
crowded market-place had to introduce itself into a street,--straight
indeed and good, but proportionably far too narrow. I have, in my life,
seen nothing like it: the aspect of it might perhaps be compared to that
of a swoln river which has been raging over meadows and fields,