It was long after midnight when we reached Nuremberg, where we were obliged to halt for the night.  We got ourselves conveyed to an inn by dint of much effort, and were kept waiting there some time before the door opened.  A fat and elderly innkeeper acceded to our entreaties to give us rooms, late as it was, but to accomplish this he found it necessary—­after much anxious reflection—­to leave us in the hall for a good long time while he vanished down a back passage.  There he stood outside a bedroom door, and we heard him calling ‘Margarethe’ in bashful and friendly tones.  He repeated the name several times with the information that visitors had arrived, and a woman answered him with oaths.  After much pressing entreaty on the innkeeper’s part Margarethe at last appeared, in neglige, and showed us, after various mysterious confabulations with the host, the rooms selected for us.  The odd part of the incident was that the immoderate laughter in which we all three indulged seemed to be noticed neither by the innkeeper nor by his chambermaid.  The next day we went to see some of the sights of the town, last of all the Germanisches Museum, which was in such a wretched condition at that time as to earn the contempt of my French companion particularly.  The large collection of instruments of torture, which included a box studded with nails, filled Blandine with sympathetic horror.

We reached Munich that evening, and inspected it the next day (after tonique and ham had again been obtained) with great satisfaction, particularly on the part of Ollivier, who thought that the ‘antique’ style in which King Ludwig I. had had the museums built contrasted most favourably with the buildings with which, much to his indignation, it had pleased Louis Napoleon to fill Paris.  I here ran across an old acquaintance, young Hornstein, whom I introduced to my friends as ‘the baron.’  His comical figure and clumsy behaviour gave them food for mirth, which degenerated into a positive orgy of merriment when ’the baron’ thought it necessary, before we started on our night journey to Reichenhall, to take us to a Bier-Brauerei some distance away, so that we should see that side of Munich life.  It was pitch dark and there was no light provided, except a stump of a candle to light ‘the baron,’ who had to go down himself to fetch the beer from the cellar.  The beer certainly tasted particularly good, and Hornstein repeated his descent into the cellar several times.  When, being obliged to hurry, we set off on our perilous journey across fields and ditches to the station, we found that the unwonted refreshment had somewhat dazed us.  Blandine fell fast asleep as soon as she got into the carriage, only waking at daybreak when we arrived at Reichenhall.  Here Cosima met us, and took us to the rooms that had been prepared for us.