in the afternoon. On arrival I drove straight to the
Darmstaedterhof, and asked to see no visitors' books, for the five days
had taken the edge off my finesse, but inquired at once whether a Mrs.
Lascelles was staying there or not. She was. It seemed incredible. Were
they sure she had not just left? They were sure. But she was not in; at
my request they made equally sure of that. She had probably gone to the
Conversationshaus, to listen to the band. All Baden went there in the
afternoon, to listen to that band. It was a very good band. Baden-Baden
was a very good place. There was no better hotel in Baden-Baden than the
Darmstaedterhof; there were no such baths in the other hotels, these
came straight from the spring, at their natural temperature. They were
matchless for rheumatism, especially in the legs. The old Empress,
Augusta, when in Baden, used to patronise this very hotel and no other.
They could show me the actual bath, and I myself could have pension
(baths excluded) for eight marks and fifty a day. If I would be so kind
as to step into the lift, I should see the room for myself, and then
with my permission they would bring in my luggage and pay the cab.

All this by degrees, from a pale youth in frock-coat and forage-cap, and
a more prosperous personage with _pince-nez_ and a paunch (yet another
concierge and my latest landlord respectively), while I stood making up
my mind. The closing proposition was of some assistance to me. I had no
luggage on the cab, of which the cabman's hat alone was visible, at the
bottom of a flight of steps, at the far end of the flagged approach. I
had left my luggage at the station, but I only recollected the fact upon
being recalled from a mental forecast of the interview before me to
these exceedingly petty preliminaries.

There and then I paid off the cab and found my own way to this
Conversationshaus. I liked the look of the trim, fresh town in its
perfect amphitheatre of pine-clad hills, covered in by a rich blue sky
from which the last clouds were exhaling like breath from a mirror. The
well-drained streets were drying clean as in a black frost; checkered
with sharp shadows, twinkling with shop windows, and strikingly free
from the more cumbrous forms of traffic. If this was Germany, I could
dispense with certain discreditable prejudices. I had to inquire my way
of a policeman in a flaming helm; because I could not understand his
copious directions, he led me to a tiny bridg