ion bronze was well on the way to completion, in honor
of the majesties who were coming for the manoeuvres. The streets which
the omnibus passed through to the Swan Inn were draped with the imperial
German and the royal Bavarian colors; and the standards of the visiting
nationalities decked the fronts of the houses where their military
attaches were lodged; but the Marches failed to see our own banner, and
were spared for the moment the ignominy of finding it over an apothecary
shop in a retired avenue. The sun had come out, the sky overhead was of a
smiling blue; and they felt the gala-day glow and thrill in the depths of
their inextinguishable youth.

The Swan Inn sits on one of the long quays bordering the Main, and its
windows look down upon the bridges and shipping of the river; but the
traveller reaches it by a door in the rear, through an archway into a
back street, where an odor dating back to the foundation of the city is
waiting to welcome him.

The landlord was there, too, and he greeted the Marches so cordially that
they fully partook his grief in being able to offer them rooms on the
front of the house for two nights only. They reconciled themselves to the
necessity of then turning out for the staff of the King of Saxony, the
more readily because they knew that there was no hope of better things at
any other hotel.

The rooms which they could have for the time were charming, and they came
down to supper in a glazed gallery looking out on the river picturesque
with craft of all fashions: with row-boats, sail-boats, and little
steamers, but mainly with long black barges built up into houses in the
middle, and defended each by a little nervous German dog. Long rafts of
logs weltered in the sunset red which painted the swift current, and
mantled the immeasurable vineyards of the hills around like the color of
their ripening grapes. Directly in face rose a castled steep, which kept
the ranging walls and the bastions and battlements of the time when such
a stronghold could have defended the city from foes without or from
tumult within. The arches of a stately bridge spanned the river
sunsetward, and lifted a succession of colossal figures against the
crimson sky.

"I guess we have been wasting our time, my dear," said March, as they,
turned from this beauty to the question of supper. "I wish we had always
been here!"

Their waiter had put them at a table in a division of the gallery beyond
that which they e