realised.

While I sat thus musing, my companion of the _banquette_, of whom I had
hitherto seen nothing but a blue-cloth cloak and a travelling-cap, came
'slap down' on me with a snort that choked him, and aroused me.

'I ask your pardon, sir,' said he in a voice that betrayed Middlesex
most culpably. 'Je suis--that is, j'ai----'

'Never mind, sir; English will answer every purpose,' cried I. 'You have
had a sound sleep of it.'

'Yes, Heaven be praised! I get over a journey as well as most men. Where
are we now--do you happen to know?'

'That old castle yonder, I suspect, is the Alten Burg,' said I, taking
out my guidebook and directory. 'The Alten Burg was built in the
year 1384, by Carl Ludwig Graf von Loewenstein, and is not without its
historic associations-----'

'Damn its historic associations!' said my companion, with an energy that
made me start. 'I wish the devil and his imps had carried away all such
trumpery, or kept them to torture people in their own hot climate,
and left us free here. I ask pardon, sir! I beseech you to forgive my
warmth; you would if you knew the cause, I'm certain.'

I began to suspect as much myself, and that my neighbour being insane,
was in no wise responsible for his opinions; when he resumed--

'Most men are made miserable by present calamities; some feel
apprehensions for the future; but no one ever suffered so much from
either as I do from the past. No, sir,' continued he, raising his
voice, 'I have been made unhappy from those sweet souvenirs of departed
greatness which guidebook people and tourists gloat over. The very
thought of antiquity makes me shudder; the name of Charlemagne gives me
the lumbago; and I'd run a mile from a conversation about Charles the
Bold or Philip van Artevelde. I see what's passing in your mind; but you
're all wrong. I'm not deranged, not a bit of it; though, faith, I might
be, without any shame or disgrace.'

The caprices of men, of Englishmen in particular, had long ceased to
surprise me; each day disclosed some new eccentricity or other. In the
very last hotel I had left there was a Member of Parliament planning a
new route to the Rhine, avoiding Cologne, because in the coffee-room of
the 'Grossen Rheinberg' there was a double door that everybody banged
when he went in or out, and so discomposed the honourable and learned
gentleman that he was laid up for three weeks with a fit of gout,
brought on by pure passion at the inconvenience.