p, should be to
enjoy the luxury of a leisurely swim in that noble river. With this
view, passing through the town, I put up at a small but decent
_gasthof_ which stood upon a patch of rising ground close upon the
margin of the stream; and having first seen to the comfort of my
horse, which was well-nigh knocked up with the day's journey, and next
attended to my own, I retired to rest at an early hour, without
descending to the common room and joining in the beery orgies of the
evening. I rose next morning, as was my custom, a full half hour
before the sun; and finding no one stirring in the house, proceeded to
the stables, the back of which overlooked the water. Here I found a
middle-aged tatterdemalion, whose flesh and costume were all of one
colour, and that the precise hue of the dungheap from which he had
just arisen, and from which one might have imagined him to have been
engendered. He was in the act of cleaning out the stable, as well as
the task could be accomplished, with his bare feet and a shovel, the
blade of which was not much bigger than his hand. With some trouble,
and with the aid of a small coin, I contrived to make him understand
my purpose; and he led me up stairs to a loft, in which I might
undress and deposit my clothes, and pointed to a rude flight of wooden
steps, leading from the window to the water's edge, and from which I
might plunge in from any height I chose.

In a few minutes, I had left my clothes upon a truss of odorous
clover, and plunging in head-foremost from the top of the ladder, I
rose to the surface at a few yards' distance from the bank, and struck
out vigorously to enjoy my swim. The sensation was deliciously cool
and pleasant. Keeping my eyes fixed upon the opposite shore, I made
towards it, feeling all the while as light as a cork and as strong as
a colt. How long I revelled in the first exquisite sense of enjoyment
I have not, nor had I then, any very distinct idea. Turning, however,
upon my back, just to vary my position, my head, of course, faced the
shore I had left, from which, to my great surprise, the good town I
had left had vanished entirely, and I became aware that the rapid
current of the river, upon which, in my eagerness for a bath, I had
not bestowed a single thought, had already carried me some mile or two
in its progress towards the Black Sea. Not being victualled for so
long a voyage, I began to look around me, and to curse the headlong
haste which had brough