Heidelberg was the only spot I ever wept at leaving. I loved it then,
and I love it now, as I love no other place on earth and Carl felt the
same way. We were mournful, indeed, as that train pulled out.




CHAPTER VII


The next two weeks were filled with vicissitudes. The idea was for Carl
to settle the little family in some rural bit of Germany, while he did
research work in the industrial section of Essen, and thereabouts,
coming home week-ends. We stopped off first at Bonn. Carl spent several
days searching up and down the Rhine and through the Moselle country for
a place that would do, which meant a place we could afford that was fit
and suitable for the babies. There was nothing. The report always was:
pensions all expensive, and automobiles touring by at a mile a minute
where the children would be playing.

On a wild impulse we moved up to Clive, on the Dutch border. After Carl
went in search of a pension, it started to drizzle. The boys, baggage,
and I found the only nearby place of shelter in a stone-cutter's
inclosure, filled with new and ornate tombstones. What was my
impecunious horror, when I heard a small crash and discovered that Jim
had dislocated a loose figure of Christ (unconsciously Cubist in
execution) from the top of a tombstone! Eight marks charges! the cost of
sixteen Heidelberg sprees. On his return, Carl reported two pensions,
one quarantined for diphtheria, one for scarlet fever. We slept over a