"Come," said he to Flemming; "make this short journey with me. We will pass a few pleasant days at Ems, and visit the other watering-places of Nassau. It will drive away the melancholy² day-dreams that haunt you. Perhaps some future bride is even now waiting for you, with dim presentiments³ and undefined longings⁴, at the Serpent's Bath."

 

"Or some widow of Ems, with a cork-leg!" said Flemming, smiling; and then added, in a toneof voice half jest, half earnest, "Certainly; let us go in pursuit of her;--

 

`Whoe'er she be,

 

That not impossible she,

 

That shall command my heart and me.

 

Where'er she lie,

 

Hidden from mortal eye,

 

In shady leaves of destiny.' "

 

They started in the afternoon for Frankfort, pursuing their way slowly along the lovely Bergstrasse, famed throughout Germany for its beauty. They passed the ruined house where Martin Luther lay concealed⁵ after the Diet of Worms, and through the village of Handschuhsheimer, as old as the days of King Pepin the Short,--a hamlet, lying under the hills, half-buried in blossoms and green leaves. Close on the right rose the mountains of the mysterious Odenwald; and on the left lay the Neckar, like a steel bow in the meadow. Farther westward⁶, a thin, smoky vapor⁷ betrayed the course of the Rhine; beyond which, like a troubled sea, ran the blue, billowy Alsatian hills. Song of birds, and sound of evening bells, and fragrance

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