se through that charming scene of peace and beauty; and ate our
dinner, and drank our wine with relish. The poor mother would eat but
little Abendessen that night; and, as for the children--that first night
at school--hard bed, hard words, strange boys bullying, and laughing,
and jarring you with their hateful merriment--as for the first night at
a strange school, we most of us remember what THAT is. And the first is
not the WORST, my boys, there's the rub. But each man has his share of
troubles, and, I suppose, you must have yours.

From Heidelberg we went to Baden-Baden: and, I dare say, saw Madame de
Schlangenbad and Madame de la Cruchecassee, and Count Punter, and honest
Captain Blackball. And whom should we see in the evening, but our two
little boys, walking on each side of a fierce, yellow-faced, bearded
man! We wanted to renew our acquaintance with them, and they were coming
forward quite pleased to greet us. But the father pulled back one of the
little men by his paletot, gave a grim scowl, and walked away. I can see
the children now looking rather frightened away from us and up into the
father's face, or the cruel uncle's--which was he? I think he was the
father. So this was the end of them. Not school, as I at first had
imagined. The mother was gone, who had given them the heaps of pretty
books, and the pretty studs in the shirts, and the pretty silken
clothes, and the tender--tender cares; and they were handed to this
scowling practitioner of Trente et Quarante. Ah! this is worse than
school. Poor little men! poor mother sitting by the vacant little beds!
We saw the children once or twice after, always in Scowler's company;
but we did not dare to give each other any marks of recognition.

From Baden we went to Basle, and thence to Lucerne, and so over the
St. Gothard into Italy. From Milan we went to Venice; and now comes the
singular part of my story. In Venice there is a little court of which
I forget the name: but in it is an apothecary's shop, whither I went to
buy some remedy for the bites of certain animals which abound in Venice.
Crawling animals, skipping animals, and humming, flying animals; all
three will have at you at once; and one night nearly drove me into a
strait-waistcoat. Well, as I was coming out of the apothecary's with the
bottle of spirits of hartshorn in my hand (it really does do the bites
a great deal of good), whom should I light upon but one of my little
Heidelberg-Baden boys!

I