every evening."

I cannot describe the laughter, the merriment, the absurd speeches that
succeeded each other until the middle of the night, accompanied by the
clinking of glasses and the roaring of the tempest. At last the moment of
departure arrived: we went down and were rolled away in a roomy carriage
which dashed rapidly across the desert. The ground was covered with snow,
the dunes were outlined in white on the dark sky, the carriage glided
noiselessly in the midst of strange indistinct forms, which succeeded each
other rapidly in the light of the lantern and seemed to melt into each
other. In that vast solitude a dead silence reigned which robbed us of
speech. After a time we began to see dwellings and arrived at a village.
We crossed two or three deserted streets, with snow-covered houses on
either side, with a few lighted windows showing human shadows. At last we
came to a railway-station, and reached the Hague in a few minutes,
although we had been deluded to think we had taken a long journey and
crossed an imaginary country. Must I tell the truth? If I were asked to
swear at the moment I am writing that the house in the midst of the dunes
was a reality, I should request ten minutes for reflection. It is true
that the master was polite enough to come and bid me good-bye at the
station the day I left the Hague, and that when I saw him clearly by
daylight he did not seem to have anything strange about him; but we all
know the various forms, the simulations, the thousand arts which a certain
gentleman and his servants assume.

At last I saw a Dutch winter, not as I had hoped to see it on leaving
Italy, for it was very mild; but still Holland was presented to me as
we are in the habit of picturing it to ourselves in the south of
Europe.

Early in the morning the first thing that attracts the eye in the
silent white streets is the print of innumerable wooden shoes left in
the snow by the boys on their way to school, and so large are the
wooden shoes that they look like the tracks of elephants. These
footsteps generally go in a straight line, showing that the boys take
the shortest cut to school, and, like steady, zealous Dutchmen, do not
play and lose time on the road. One can see long rows of children
wrapped up in large scarfs, with their heads half hidden between their
shoulders--little bundles arm in arm, walking two by two, or three by
three, or pressed together in groups like a bunch of asparagus, out of