Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 1.djvu/220

 a week—house-rent and everything included. We could easily spend more, but it is impossible, from the system of things, to spend less. The most agreeable luxury, indeed the only one that there is any opportunity of enjoying, are horses to visit the surrounding country. I wish we had our little Welsh ponies to scamper over the hills away from the malades.

The incidents of our day are few. Now and then Herr Fries, sometimes accompanied by his soi-disant English master, sometimes in all the desolating impotence of his unintelligible German, presses on our attention our pretended compact for four months; we have but one answer—the Commissaire through whose mediation we made the bargain. I do not think Herr Fries has even applied to him, and when we mention the subject he treats it with lofty contempt. Meanwhile our month is nearly concluded, and we shall soon leave Kissingen. I assure myself that I have benefited by the waters, though I gain no belief from my companions who do not drink them, and find the place and its dinners very intolerable. In the midst of our balancing whither to go, a few circumstances have turned the scale. Letters have arrived from a college friend of P. and K., begging us to come to Dresden. There is a railroad we find from Leipsig to Berlin, and from Leipsig to