ld certainly have been polite enough
to accommodate facts to my desires. It was all the more annoying,
because the Weissenstein stood overhead so engagingly, and I should have
been only too glad to spend the night in the hotel there, if anyone had
given me the slightest encouragement. I specially pointed at the
neighbourhood of this hotel to my doubtful friend, as being likely for
caves; but he was not in the pay of the landlord, and so failed to take
the hint. There is a curious hole in which ice is found near
Weissenstein in Carniola,[55] and it is not impossible that this may
have originated the idea of a glaciere near Soleure.

The Schweizerhof at Berne is a very comfortable resting-place; but, in
spite of its various excellences, if a tired traveller is told that No.
53 is to be his room, he will do well to seek a bed elsewhere. No. 53 is
a sort of closet to some other number, with a single window opening low
on to the passage, and is adjudged to the unfortunate individual who
arrives at that omnipresent crisis which raises the charge for
bed-rooms, and silences all objections to their want of comfort--namely,
when there is only one bed left in the house. In itself, No. 53 would be
well enough; but the throne of the chambermaid is in the passage, by the
side of the window, and the male attendant on that particular stage
naturally gravitates to the same point, when the bells of the stage do
not summon him elsewhere, and often enough when they do. This
combination leads of course to local disturbances of a somewhat noisy
character, and however entirely a sleepy man may in principle sympathise
with the causes of the noise, it becomes rather hard to bear after
midnight. The precise actors on the present occasion have, no doubt,
quarrelled or set up a _cafe_ before now, or perhaps have achieved both
results by taking the latter first; but there is reason to believe that
so long as the window of No. 53 is the seat of the chambermaid for the
time being, so long will that room be--as the landlord neatly expressed
it when a protest was made--_etwas unruhig_.

All Switzerland has been playing at soldiers for some time, and as we
left Berne the next morning, we saw three or four hundred Federal men of
war marching down the road which runs parallel with the rails. The three
officers at the head of the column were elderly and stout; moreover,
they were mounted, and that fact was evidently due rather to the
meekness of their ch