rofaneness.

Meantime, though shaken in argument, the raw reptiles were duly eaten
and relished by the company, and served to provoke thirst, a principal
aim of all the solids in that part of Germany. So now the company drank
garausses all round, and their tongues were unloosed, and oh, the Babel!
But above the fierce clamour rose at intervals, like some hero's war-cry
in battle, the trumpet-like voice of the Burgundian soldier shouting
lustily, "Courage, camarades, le diable est mort!"

Entered grisly Ganymede holding in his hand a wooden dish with circles
and semicircles marked on it in chalk. He put it down on the table
and stood silent, sad, and sombre, as Charon by Styx waiting for his
boat-load of souls. Then pouches and purses were rummaged, and each
threw a coin into the dish. Gerard timidly observed that he had drunk
next to no beer, and inquired how much less he was to pay than the
others.

"What mean you?" said Ganymede roughly. "Whose fault is it you have not
drunken? Are all to suffer because one chooses to be a milksop? You will
pay no more than the rest, and no less."

Gerard was abashed.

"Courage, petit, le diable est mort," hiccoughed the soldier and flung
Ganymede a coin.

"You are bad as he is," said the old man peevishly; "you are paying too
much;" and the tyrannical old Aristides returned him some coin out of
the trencher with a most reproachful countenance. And now the man whom
Gerard had confuted an hour and a half ago awoke from a brown study, in
which he had been ever since, and came to him and said, "Yes, but the
honey is none the worse for passing through the bees' bellies."

Gerard stared. The answer had been so long on the road he hadn't an idea
what it was an answer to. Seeing him dumfounded, the other concluded him
confuted, and withdrew calmed.

The bedrooms were upstairs, dungeons with not a scrap of furniture
except the bed, and a male servant settled inexorably who should sleep
with whom. Neither money nor prayers would get a man a bed to himself
here; custom forbade it sternly. You might as well have asked to
monopolize a see-saw. They assigned to Gerard a man with a great black
beard. He was an honest fellow enough, but not perfect; he would not go
to bed, and would sit on the edge of it telling the wretched Gerard by
force, and at length, the events of the day, and alternately laughing
and crying at the same circumstances, which were not in the smallest
degree pathetic or