A Burgundian soldier with his arbalest at his back came peeping over Gerard's shoulder, and seeing what was amiss, laughed so loud that the room rang again, then slapped him on the back and cried, "Courage! le diable est mort."Gerard stared: he doubted alike the good tidings and their relevancy; but the tones were so hearty and the arbalestrier's face, notwithstanding a formidable beard, was so gay and genial, that he smiled, and after a pause said drily, "Il a bien faite avec l'eau et linge du pays on allait le noircir a ne se reconnaitre plus.""Tiens, tiens!" cried the soldier, "v'la qui parle le Francais peu s'en faut," and he seated himself by Gerard, and in a moment was talking volubly of war, women, and pillage, interlarding his discourse with curious oaths, at which Gerard drew away from him more or less.
Presently in came the grisly servant, and counted them all on his fingers superciliously, like Abraham telling sheep; then went out again, and returned with a deal trencher and deal spoon to each.
Then there was an interval.Then he brought them a long mug apiece made of glass, and frowned.By-and-by he stalked gloomily in with a hunch of bread apiece, and exit with an injured air.Expectation thus raised, the guests sat for nearly an hour balancing the wooden spoons, and with their own knives whittling the bread.
Eventually, when hope was extinct, patience worn out, and hunger exhausted, a huge vessel was brought in with pomp, the lid was removed, a cloud of steam rolled forth, and behold some thin broth with square pieces of bread floating.This, though not agreeable to the mind, served to distend the body.Slices of Strasbourg ham followed, and pieces of salt fish, both so highly salted that Gerard could hardly swallow a mouthful.Then came a kind of gruel, and when the repast had lasted an hour and more, some hashed meat highly peppered and the French and Dutch being now full to the brim with the above dainties, and the draughts of beer the salt and spiced meats had provoked, in came roasted kids, most excellent, and carp and trout fresh from the stream.Gerard made an effort and looked angrily at them, but "could no more," as the poets say.The Burgundian swore by the liver and pike-staff of the good centurion, the natives had outwitted him.Then turning to Gerard, he said, "Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort," as loudly as before, but not with the same tone of conviction.The canny natives had kept an internal corner for contingencies, and polished the kid's very bones.
The feast ended with a dish of raw animalcula in a wicker cage.Acheese had been surrounded with little twigs and strings; then a hole made in it and a little sour wine poured in.This speedily bred a small but numerous vermin.When the cheese was so rotten with them that only the twigs and string kept it from tumbling to pieces and walking off quadrivious, it came to table.By a malicious caprice of fate, cage and menagerie were put down right under the Dutchman's organ of self-torture.He recoiled with a loud ejaculation, and hung to the bench by the calves of his legs.
"What is the matter?" said a traveller disdainfully."Does the good cheese scare ye? Then put it hither, in the name of all the saints!""Cheese!" cried Gerard, "I see none.These nauseous reptiles have made away with every bit of it.""Well," replied another, "it is not gone far.By eating of the mites we eat the cheese to boot.""Nay, not so," said Gerard."These reptiles are made like us, and digest their food and turn it to foul flesh even as we do ours to sweet; as well might you think to chew grass by eating of grass-fed beeves, as to eat cheese by swallowing these uncleanly insects."Gerard raised his voice in uttering this, and the company received the paradox in dead silence, and with a distrustful air, like any other stranger, during which the Burgundian, who understood German but imperfectly, made Gerard Gallicize the discussion.He patted his interpreter on the back."C'est bien, mon gars; plus fin que toi n'est pas bete," and administered his formula of encouragement; and Gerard edged away from him; for next to ugly sights and ill odours, the poor wretch disliked profaneness.
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.
