vent them crossing my memory; but though
there is a most artful system of artificial "mnemonics" invented by some
one, the Lethal art has met no explorer, and no man has ever yet found
out the way to shut the door against bygones. I believe it is scarcely
more than five miles to Bregenz from Lindau, and yet I was almost
as many hours on the road. I sat down, perhaps twenty times, lost in
revery; indeed, I'm not very sure that I did n't take a sound sleep
under a spreading willow, so that, when I reached the inn, the
company was just going in to dinner at the _table d'hote_. Simple
and unpretentious as that board was, the company that graced it was
certainly distinguished, being no less than the Austrian field-marshal
in command of the district, and the officers of his staff. To English
notions, it seemed very strange to see a nobleman of the highest rank,
in the proudest state of Europe, seated at a dinner-table open to all
comers, at a fraction less than one shilling a head, and where some of
the government officials of the place daily came.

It was not without a certain sense of shame that I found myself in the
long low chamber, in which about twenty officers were assembled, whose
uniforms were all glittering with stars, medals, and crosses; in fact,
to a weak-minded civilian like myself, they gave the impression of
a group of heroes fresh come from all the triumphant glories of a
campaign. Between the staff, which occupied one end of the long table,
and the few townsfolk who sat at the other, there intervened a sort of
frontier territory uninhabited; and it was here that the waiter located
me,--an object of observation and remark to each. Resolving to learn how
I was treated by my critics, I addressed the waiter in the very worst
French, and protested my utter ignorance of German. I had promised
myself much amusement from this expedient, but was doomed to a severe
disappointment,--the officers coolly setting me down for a servant,
while the townspeople pronounced me a pedler; and when these judgments
had been recorded, instead of entering upon a psychological examination
of my nature, temperament, and individuality, they never noticed me any
more. I felt hurt at this, more, indeed, for their sakes than my own,
since I bethought me of the false impression that is current of this
people throughout Europe, where they have the reputation of philosophers
deeply engaged in researches into character, minute anatomists of hum