Visiting Dusseldorf for the sake of the school of art there, I seemed to go into the Middle Ages.  We landed from the Rhine steamer in the night, finding the streets deserted even by the police, and dimly lighted by oil lamps hung across them at wide intervals, and I wandered a long time at random with my valise in hand, searching for a hotel, and not meeting a living person to ask guidance of.  I blundered at length on a little inn in whose drinking-room still burned a light, and in which I found a night’s lodging.  Such a primitive state of civilization was to me, fresh from Paris and Brussels, romantic.  At Berlin I made the acquaintance of Varnhagen von Ense, through a letter of introduction from Frau Schmidt, my republican refugee friend of London.  He treated me with great consideration, and promised me a winter of brilliant social life if I would stay at Berlin.  The chief inducement offered was the acquaintance of Humboldt, then absent from the city.  Of Varnhagen von Ense I retain the most delightful memory.  I found him courteous, genial, and hospitable, with a large-minded outlook on politics and a great interest in America.  I saw also the new museum, with Kaulbach at work on his frescoes, and, going by Dresden, reached Prague, where I began my political reports to Kossuth.

Arriving at Vienna, I was beforehand with the famous police, which I found not to merit its reputation for sharpness, and went at once, after establishing myself at the hotel, and before my name was reported to the authorities and a spy put on me, to the address of a republican, known to Kossuth, and to whom I was directed to apply for the identification of some Hungarian resident in the city on whom Kossuth could depend to reestablish communication with the Viennese malcontents, broken by a misadventure of his former agent.  This adventure Kossuth recounted to me, I suppose to keep up my courage in the perilous business he was sending me on.  One of his agents had been sent on a round tour with instructions for certain officers or soldiers, and, having been detected in communication with the barracks and arrested, a memorandum book was found on him in which, amongst many addresses of persons to whom he had no mission, those to which he was directed were interspersed.  All were arrested, among them the Vienna agent, who, ignorant of the reason of his arrest, suspecting treachery, and fearing the disclosures that might be extorted from him by torture, rolled himself in his bedclothes and set fire to them with his candle, the only means of suicide left him.  When he felt that the burning was fatal he made an alarm and bade the attendant call the council of war, which immediately met in his cell.  He then avowed his complicity in treasonable plans, and, assuring them that nothing more could be extorted from him by any torture they might inflict, that his chief would soon come and make all things right, and that there were thousands more as ready to die as he, he refused to say any more and died in silence.