'thou' and 'thine.'"
Having reached the affectionate stage of exhilaration, we enter at once
into the spirit of the proposal, and each in his turn, glass in hand,
locking his arm in that of the enthusiastic Pimblebeck, drinks eternal
friendship: to love truly; to defend valiantly; and to address each other
by no other title than that of "thou" and "thee" for the rest of our
lives.

I confess to a certain obliviousness here; a mental haze, amid which the
mingled airs of "Rule Britannia" and the "Marsellaise" float
indistinctly. But above all, and through all, with terrible
distinctness, tones the voice of Pimblebeck; his boyish form dilated into
the dimensions of a Goliath, as he pours forth the words of a Prussian
revolutionary song, some few of which stand out in letters of fire in my
memory still, thus:--

"Prinzen vom Land hinaus,
Denn kommt der Burger Schmaus;
Aristokraten
Werden gebraten;
Fursten and Pfaffen die werden gehangt!"

"Drive out the prince and priest,
Then comes the burger's feast;
Each aristocrat
Shall broil in his fat,
And nobles and bigoted bishops be hanged."

CHAPTER XIII.

FAIR TIME AT LEIPSIC.

From Berlin to Leipsic by rail, in an open carriage, is not the most
interesting journey in the world. Whirr, whizz, burr! away we hum
through the keen Spring air, between pleasant banks and dark fir-woods,
not very rapidly indeed, for we travel under government regulations, but
pleasantly enough if it were not for the sparks and the dust. There are
few objects of interest on our route, till we perceive the towers of
Wittenberg rising out of the hollow on the left, and we are at once
buried in a dream about the simple monk of Eisleben, who, in his struggle
against the papal authority, grew into the gigantic proportions of a
Luther.

At Kothen we change carriages, for we are on the Saxon frontier. With a
snort and a roar, we start upon our journey over the dull waste, which
can be described in no better way than by the single word repeated: sand,
sand, sand. And now it comes on to rain, and my thin blouse is but a
sorry shred to withstand the cold, dead drizzle. By degrees the heavy
night clouds wrap themselves round us, fold by fold, till we see the
engine fire reflected on the ground like a flying meteor; and the forms
of lonely trees on the roadside come upon us suddenly, like spectres out
of the darkness.

"Have you a l