long Hauptstrasse so slowly, that it seemed to him endless. The
shops werelighted on each side of the street, and he saw faces at
the windows here and there, and figures passing in the lamp-light,
visible for a moment and then swallowed up in the darkness. The
thoughts that filled his mind were strange; as are always the
thoughts of a traveller, who enters for the first time a strange
city. This little world had been going on for centuries before he
came; and would go on for centuries after he was gone. Of all the
thousands who inhabited it he knew nothing; and what knew they, or
thought, of the stranger, who, in that close post-chaise, weary with
travel, and chilled by the evening wind, was slowly rumbling over
the paved street! Truly, this world can go on without us, if we
would but think so. If it had been a hearse instead of a
post-chaise, it would have been all the same to the people of
Heidelberg,--though by no means the same to Paul Flemming.

But at the farther end of the city, near the Castle and the
Carls-Thor, one warm heart was waiting to receive him; and this was
the German heart of his friend, the Baron of Hohenfels, with whom he
was to pass the winter in Heidelberg. No sooner had the carriage
stopped at the irongrated gate, and the postilion blown his horn, to
announce the arrival of a traveller, than the Baron was seen among
the servants at the door; and, a few moments afterwards, the two
long-absent friends were in each other's arms, and Flemming received
a kiss upon each cheek, and another on the mouth, as the pledge and
seal of the German's friendship. They held each other long by the
hand, and looked into each other's faces, and saw themselves in each
other's eyes, both literally and figuratively; literally, inasmuch
as the images were there; and figuratively, inasmuch as each was
imagining what the other thought of him, after the lapse of some