"I have forgotten," said Monsieur Hermann, "the name of the other
young man. But the confidences which Prosper Magnan subsequently made
to me enabled me to know that his companion was dark, rather thin, and
jovial. I will, if you please, call him Wilhelm, to give greater
clearness to the tale I am about to tell you."

The worthy German resumed his narrative after having, without the
smallest regard for romanticism and local color, baptized the young
French surgeon with a Teutonic name.]

By the time the two young men reached Andernach the night was dark.
Presuming that they would lose much time in looking for their chiefs
and obtaining from them a military billet in a town already full of
soldiers, they resolved to spend their last night of freedom at an inn
standing some two or three hundred feet from Andernach, the rich color
of which, embellished by the fires of the setting sun, they had
greatly admired from the summit of the hill above the town. Painted
entirely red, this inn produced a most piquant effect in the
landscape, whether by detaching itself from the general background of
the town, or by contrasting its scarlet sides with the verdure of the
surrounding foliage, and the gray-blue tints of the water. This house
owed its name, the Red Inn, to this external decoration, imposed upon
it, no doubt from time immemorial by the caprice of its founder. A
mercantile superstition, natural enough to the different possessors of
the building, far-famed among the sailors of the Rhine, had made them
scrupulous to preserve the title.

Hearing the sound of horses' hoofs, the master of the Red Inn came out
upon the threshold of his door.