saloon now occupied for the exhibition of the Welshman and his lice.

"It is something I do not understand; they are certainly lice!"

O, yes! that any one can see with half an eye. But where did they come from?"

The professor shrugged his shoulders. "That is the question!" and for a long time the professor teased Annie with arguments of a system familiar to him as a student of Professor Oken, in Germany. "Ah!" said he, "if I could but find the vord, I could tell you all I thought of it in one vord," putting his hand to his forehead. He had but a slight German accent.

Oliver and Mrs. Fitzallen, and Frank and Lydia, came up to them as they were promenading; and Oliver asked the professor what it was troubled him. The professor explained, and asked them all to aid his memory.

"O," said Frank, "the English vocabulary is very opulent! Absurd, rigmarole, twaddle, fudge, trash, stuff, moonshine, platitude, flummery.'"-Not one of these was the word sought for.

Oliver tried his hand at it: "Nonsensical, foolish, extravagant, bombast, stolidity, doltishness, silly, base, baseless."- Nor was Oliver successful.

"Now, ladies, won't you try?" And, like drops before a heavy shower, the words came rattling on: "Childish, babyish, idiotic, thick-skulled, dull-witted, sappy, weak-headed, inexplicable, paradoxical, confused, transcendental.” - Not one of all would meet

the requirements of the professor.

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THE MANIAC AT THE BRUNNENS.

113

Dipping up moonshine with a pitch-fork, professor!" said Frank, beginning again.

"All very brober, but not my vord; it is much used by men in bolitics."

"Buncombe!" cried Frank; "speaking to Buncombe' as old Felix Walker was wont to say in Congress."

No, not it. Ah, it is humboog! humboog!" Delighted to have got his word, the professor clapped his hands for joy; and the party, rejoicing in his joy, and pleased with his wit, laughed heartily, to the infinite satisfaction of the professor.

CHAPTER XXII.

DEPARTURE OF THE PILGRIMS FROM BRUNNENS CASTLE.

EARLY in the morning, during the last week of their stay at the Brunnens Castle, Gertrude and Annie were walking upon the lawn with Lydia Greenleaf, when they heard a shriek, and, turning round, a girl, whose long hair was streaming in the wind, flew towards them, and, falling at the feet of Gertrude, clung to her dress. Looking up with wild terror, she cried: "O, save

me, lady!

I am not mad! They have put me in a damp, dark hole, where there is no light, and demons are there, and I can't live! O God, help me! I am not mad! Lady, help me! help me - - O, help me!"

While this poor girl was thus speaking, clinging to Gertrude's

dress, a man, in a red baize blouse, came running towards them, and, with the fury of a demon, clutched this poor, wretched girl by the hair, and dragged her, shrieking, away, she crying, "I am not mad! I am not mad!"

Gertrude ran and clung to this infernal wretch, praying him to have pity on the girl. She would not let him go; and he was compelled to loose his grasp upon the hair of this poor child of grief, and bear her away in his arms, when he disappeared with her, running into the basement-story of one of the outbuildings of the hotels.

In a tumult of terror the ladies returned to their hotel, and found their husbands and Professor Reinhard upon the terrace. When they could speak, they told their tale of terror, and learned, for the first time, that this castle was a famous madhouse; and that the madness was all of one kind, which Prof. Reinhard said was by some attributed to drinking the water, and by others to the effects of too much study, or from causes too obscure or too refined for him to explain. This news and the state of Gertrude's nerves determined Frank to leave the Brunnens at once.

Our pilgrims' determination caused quite a sensation in the circles of the Brunnens Castle. They had made many friends, and the society was not without its attractions. The coteries had the charm of novelty peculiar to the Brunnens. It was not a life without thought, a mere pursuit of new fashions of dress and new music, as at Vanity Fair. It was thinking, though thinking in new paths, which grew more tangled and dark as

PROFESSOR REINHARD AND GERTRUDE.

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the mind advanced, seeking and hoping to wind itself out of the labyrinths of speculation into the clear light of certainty.

They had become attached to Professor Reinhard. His constant courtesy had been a source of daily pleasure to them, and Frank urged him to take a seat in his coach and go along with them; but he declined, and said he must go back to his professor's chair.

The professor, the night before they left, came to their parlor, and, after a long talk, rising to leave, he said: "I wish you may reach the Celestial City. It is a long time since I have met with a party of travellers really in earnest to perform that journey; and, for myself, I have come to regard it a myth, a beautiful picture of the imagination, as real as the Atlantis of Plato, or the Utopia of Sir Thomas More."

"And have you so soon forgotten your father's hearth-stone and your mother's prayer?" asked Gertrude, offering him her hand, which he took in both his with most tender respect. "Do you never remember with love and tenderness the hour of rest, when, taking your little hands in hers, and at her knee, that mother taught you to say,

'Unser Bater in dem Himmel!'”

and Gertrude repeated with emotion, tears filling her eyes, the Lord's prayer in the tongue of his infancy. Professor Reinhard's heart was touched; kissing her hand, with tears streaming, he left the room without a word of farewell.

Mrs. Fitzallen had received an important despatch from Mr. John Thompson. It was a great secret, too great to be kept by

one person, and she must get Annie and Gertrude to help her keep it. Mr. John Thompson wrote Mrs. Fitzallen of his great bereavement. His wife was in a coffin, ready to be buried next day. That he had shut himself up, and would not even read the cards left at his door; and that, to avoid all annoyances, he should shut up his house and go to his farm-house for the season. He wished her to meet him on the first of December, at Vanity Fair, to be married on the day following, lest his wife's friends should get wind of it. "Now," said he, in concluding, " my happiness depends on our secrecy. I can keep my secrets, see that you also keep them! " "Isn't that mercantile despatch? Now, do stay and go home with me and see me married. Won't it be a surprise to somebody, and shan't I suffer for it?"

The Conversazione of the evening enabled our pilgrims to take leave of all their friends; and, with the rising sun, they left Brunnens Castle for a further prosecution of their journey towards the Celestial City.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THEIR ARRIVAL AT THE VILLA DI ROMA.

INASMUCH as our pilgrims were staging it, their guide-book was entirely superseded, and, as a matter of routine, they followed the lead of their driver, who they believed was a skilful tourist and courier, and to be relied upon as such. And, certainly, they