Chapter CXVII: BONN, September 18, 1846

I have been for six days in this beautiful land--not of Bonn, I mean, but of Rhenish Prussia--where civilisation is very advanced, except in the matter of beds, which are always four feet long, while the sheets are only three. I am leading a German life, that is, I rise at five o’clock and go to bed at nine, after having eaten four meals. So far, this sort of life agrees with me very well, and it is not a bad thing to do nothing but open my mouth and bat my eyes. The German women have become horribly ugly since my last visit.

Here is a sketch of the prettiest hat I have seen; it was while on a steamboat going between Trèves and Coblenz; the surroundings are not shown in the illustration, which I give on the next page. It is a capote, around which is draped a piece of plaid stuff, falling over the edge, and one corner of which is looped up on the left side of the hat by means of a small green, white, and red rosette. The capote is black, the German lady very fair, with feet like those in the drawing.

N. B.--The drawing is made to the scale of a centimètre for a mètre. I wish you would introduce these hats. You would make them fashionable.

Speaking of monuments, I have seen none that I cared for; the German architects seem to me worse than ours. The Münster at Bonn has been looted, and the Abbey of Laahr painted a colour calculated to make one gnash his teeth. The scenery on the Moselle is much overdrawn. In reality it is not remarkable. Since passing the Tmolus I have seen nothing to stir my sense of the beautiful. My admiration extends no farther than its shade trees, and the way in which cookery is understood; in this land the all-important business is _zu speisen_. After having dined at one o’clock, all good people have tea and cake at four, then at six they take a roll with sliced tongue, out in the garden; this enables them to exist until eight o’clock, when they go to the hôtel for supper. What becomes of the women during this time I can not imagine; what is certain is that from eight until ten o’clock not a man is at home. Every one goes to his favourite hôtel to drink, eat, and smoke. The explanation is found, I fancy, in the feet of the women and the excellence of the Rhine wine.

I suppose you will be in Paris in a few days. When I see the woods along the Rhine and the Moselle still green, I picture to myself those of our climate as bare as broomsticks. This, unfortunately, is only too probable. It is as you wished it. Good-bye. I regret that I did not ask you to write to me at Cologne, but it is now too late.