Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 1.djvu/203

 pleasant shade. We slept at Lohr. This town is delightfully situated on the Main; the inn, good; the only drawback was, that they had no bread—an extraordinary circumstance, it appeared to me, in Germany, as I have always enjoyed and vaunted its peculiar blessing of excellent bread, even when all else was repulsive. There was some very black bread I could not touch, and some sort of cakes, stale, and even mouldy. We showed them complainingly to our dirty-handed waiter, who caught them up. “These not good,” he cried, turning them about and tossing them from one hand to the other—from bad to worse—“they were new yesterday—they are excellent.” This manipulation succeeded in rendering them absolutely uneatable. We did not like even to look at them.

Our next day’s journey was hilly, as we crossed a height and passed from the valley of the Main to the valley of the Saale. The hills are lower, but the country bears the same characteristics—a clear stream, bordered by a grassy plain—wooded hills, forming amphitheatres, closing around. The villages are miserable enough.

With eager eyes we caught a view of Kissingen, as we descended the hill from Hammelburg. It looked a small village interspersed with a few large houses on the banks of the Saale. The river meanders