CHAPTER XXVII.
A RECENT EXPLOSION IN AN ANCIENT CRATER.
It is, perhaps, a pity for the human race in general, that some enterprising company cannot buy up the Moselle (not the wine, but the river), cut it into five-mile lengths, and distribute them over Europe, wherever there is a demand for lovely scenery.

For lovely is its proper epithet; it is not grand, not exciting--so much the better; it is scenery to live and die in; scenery to settle in, and study a single landscape, till you know every rock, and walnut-tree, and vine-leaf by heart: not merely to run through in one hasty steam-trip, as you now do, in a long burning day, which makes you not "drunk"-- but weary--"with excess of beauty." Besides, there are two or three points so superior to the rest, that having seen them, one cares to see nothing more.

That paradise of emerald, purple, and azure, which opens behind Treis; and that strange heap of old-world houses at Berncastle, which have scrambled up to the top of a rock to stare at the steamer, and have never been able to get down again--between them, and after them, one feels like a child who, after a great mouthful of pine-apple jam, is condemned to have poured down its throat an everlasting stream of treacle.
So thought Stangrave on board the steamer, as he smoked his way up the shallows, and wondered which turn of the river would bring him to his destination.

When would it all be over?
And he never leaped on shore more joyfully than he did at Alf that afternoon, to jump into a carriage, and trundle up the gorge of the Issbach some six lonely weary miles, till he turned at last into the wooded caldron of the Romer-kessel, and saw the little chapel crowning the central knoll, with the white high-roofed houses of Bertrich nestling at its foot.
He drives up to the handsome old Kurhaus, nestling close beneath heather-clad rocks, upon its lawn shaded with huge horse-chestnuts, and set round with dahlias, and geraniums, and delicate tinted German stocks, which fill the air with fragrance; a place made only for young lovers:--certainly not for those black, petticoated worthies, each with that sham of a sham, the modern tonsure, pared down to a poor florin's breadth among their bushy, well-oiled curls, who sit at little tables, passing the lazy day "a muguetter les bourgeoises" of Sarrebruck and Treves, and sipping the fragrant Josephshofer--perhaps at the good bourgeois' expense.
Past them Stangrave slips angrily; for that "development of humanity" can find no favour in his eyes; being not human at all, but professedly superhuman, and therefore, practically, sometimes inhuman.
He hurries into the public room; seizes on the visitor's book.
The names are there, in their own handwriting: but where are they?
Waiters are seized and questioned.

The English ladies came back last night, and are gone this afternoon.
"Where are they gone ?" Nobody recollects: not even the man from whom they hired the carriage.
But they are not gone far.