one, at the end of the week: and an English baronet, who always
brings a lozenge box with him, which, when he has filled, he retires
with; and this he frequently contrives to accomplish, for he possesses
his own luck and that of some one else in the bargain. Ems is the
principal resort of Russians, who play fearfully high, and a good deal
of private gambling is done there on the quiet; while Aix-la-Chapelle
appears only destined as a trap for incautious travellers, many of whom,
in consequence, never see the Rhine, and return to England with very
misty ideas about Germany.

Aix-la-Chapelle will never be erased from our memory, on account of a
most ludicrous scene which happened on our first visit to Germany. Being
unacquainted with German at the time, and our French being of the sort
which Chaucer calls "French of Bow," we had selected one of our party,
who boasted of his knowledge of most foreign tongues, and installed
himself as "Dolmetscher." His first experiment was in ordering supper,
which he proceeded to do in something he was pleased to call German.

"Plait-il, M'nsieu?" said the waiter.

The order was repeated.

"Would you have the kindness to spik Angleesh?" remarked the garcon.

Though this raised some doubts in our minds as to our friend's capacity,
yet one of our party, feeling indisposed, invoked his intercession for
the sake of procuring some Seidlitz powders. However, in his
indignation, he refused to have any thing to do with it. In this
dilemma, the sick man called in the English-conversing waiter to his
aid, who readily offered to help him, and soon returned with a bottle of
Seidlitz _water_, which he persuaded our unwary friend to make trial of.
Now this water happens to be the strongest of all the mineral springs in
Germany, and the consequence was, the poor young man became very shortly
alarmingly unwell. In his anxiety, he fancied himself poisoned, and
summoned the waiter once more. On his reappearance, he compelled him to
finish the whole of the bottle, which contained nearly a quart, to prove
it was not of a dangerous nature; but, in point of fact, it proved to be
so, by nearly killing the wretched garcon.

The company to be seen round the table consists usually of Russians and
French, both male and female, with a sprinkling of Germans, who escape
from their own police in order to satisfy their itching for play. Thus,
for instance, we have Nassau and Darmstadt people at Baden-Baden, while