but contented. He was evidently a dog
of strange and sudden fancies, and we feared for the moment lest he might
take a liking to us. But he let us pass with indifference. His loyalty
to this unresponsive man was touching; and we made no attempt to
undermine it.

Having completed to our satisfaction the Black Forest, we journeyed on
our wheels through Alt Breisach and Colmar to Munster; whence we started
a short exploration of the Vosges range, where, according to the present
German Emperor, humanity stops. Of old, Alt Breisach, a rocky fortress
with the river now on one side of it and now on the other--for in its
inexperienced youth the Rhine never seems to have been quite sure of its
way,--must, as a place of residence, have appealed exclusively to the
lover of change and excitement. Whoever the war was between, and
whatever it was about, Alt Breisach was bound to be in it. Everybody
besieged it, most people captured it; the majority of them lost it again;
nobody seemed able to keep it. Whom he belonged to, and what he was, the
dweller in Alt Breisach could never have been quite sure. One day he
would be a Frenchman, and then before he could learn enough French to pay
his taxes he would be an Austrian. While trying to discover what you did
in order to be a good Austrian, he would find he was no longer an
Austrian, but a German, though what particular German out of the dozen
must always have been doubtful to him. One day he would discover that he
was a Catholic, the next an ardent Protestant. The only thing that could
have given any stability to his existence must have been the monotonous
necessity of paying heavily for the privilege of being whatever for the
moment he was. But when one begins to think of these things one finds
oneself wondering why anybody in the Middle Ages, except kings and tax
collectors, ever took the trouble to live at all.

For variety and beauty, the Vosges will not compare with the hills of the
Schwarzwald. The advantage about them from the tourist's point of view
is their superior poverty. The Vosges peasant has not the unromantic air
of contented prosperity that spoils his _vis-a-vis_ across the Rhine. The
villages and farms possess more the charm of decay. Another point
wherein the Vosges district excels is its ruins. Many of its numerous
castles are perched where you might think only eagles would care to
build. In others, commenced by the Romans and finished by the
Trouba