as the dressing was by no means accomplished when the deputation
arrived. My late guide, now, as he said, a friend for life, made a
speech to the people, setting forth that he had done that day what he
had never thought to do; for, often as he had been to the entrance of
the Schafloch--five or six times at the least--he had never before
reached the end of the cave. And to whom, he asked, did he owe it? All
previous Herrschaft under his charge had cried _Immer zurück!_ but
this present Herr had known but one cry, _Immer vorwärts!_ Luckily the
steamer now approached, so the speech came to an end, and he shook
hands affectionately, with a vigour that would certainly have
transmitted some of the dye, if that material had not become a part of
the skin which it coloured. Then the village also shook hands, having
evidently understood what Christian said, notwithstanding the fact
that it was intelligible German, and I returned to Thun and Berne.

No. 53 was still the only bed disengaged, for it was very late when I
reached Berne; but on my vehement protestations against that unquiet
chamber, the landlord most obligingly converted a sofa in his own
sitting-room into a temporary bed, and made it over to me. This room was
separated by a door of ground-glass from another sitting-room
brilliantly lighted, in which a number of German young gentlemen were
fêting the return of a comrade after the national manner. The landlord
said he thought it must soon be over, for he doubted whether they could
last much longer; but their powers of endurance were greater than he had
supposed. It will readily be imagined that German songs with a good
chorus, the solo parts being very short, and received with the utmost
impatience by the chorus, were even less soporific in their effect than
the flirtations--though boisterous beyond all conventional propriety--of
German housemaids and waiters.[65]