bunch of keys, silver buckles, braided hair,--all distinctive signs of
the mistress of a German inn (a costume which has been so often
depicted in colored prints that it is too common to describe here),
--well, this wife of the innkeeper kept the two friends alternately
patient and impatient with remarkable ability.

Little by little the noise decreased, the various travellers retired
to their rooms, the clouds of smoke dispersed. When places were set
for the two young men, and the classic carp of the Rhine appeared upon
the table, eleven o'clock was striking and the room was empty. The
silence of night enabled the young surgeons to hear vaguely the noise
their horses made in eating their provender, and the murmur of the
waters of the Rhine, together with those indefinable sounds which
always enliven an inn when filled with persons preparing to go to bed.
Doors and windows are opened and shut, voices murmur vague words, and
a few interpellations echo along the passages.

At this moment of silence and tumult the two Frenchmen and their
landlord, who was boasting of Andernach, his inn, his cookery, the
Rhine wines, the Republican army, and his wife, were all three
listening with a sort of interest to the hoarse cries of sailors in a
boat which appeared to be coming to the wharf. The innkeeper, familiar
no doubt with the guttural shouts of the boatmen, went out hastily,
but presently returned conducting a short stout man, behind whom
walked two sailors carrying a heavy valise and several packages. When
these were deposited in the room, the short man took the valise and
placed it beside him as he seated himself without ceremony at the same
table as the surgeons.

"Go and sleep in your boat," he said to the boatmen, "as the inn is