Then the villager also went.
'Gute Nacht, Frau Seidl,' to the landlady; 'Gute Nacht,' at random, to me.
So I looked at the newspaper. Then I asked the landlady for a cigarette, not knowing how else to begin. So she came to my table, and we talked.
It pleased me to take upon myself a sort of romantic, wandering character; she said my German was 'schön'; a little goes a long way.
So I asked her who were the men who had sat at the long table. She became rather stiff and curt.
'They are the men looking for work,' she said, as if the subject were disagreeable.
'But why do they come here, so many?' I asked.
Then she told me that they were going out of the country: this was almost the last village of the border: that the relieving officer in each village was empowered to give to every vagrant a ticket entitling the holder to an evening meal, bed, and bread in the morning, at a certain inn. This was the inn for the vagrants coming to this village. The landlady received fourpence per head, I believe it was, for each of these wanderers.
'Little enough,' I said.
'Nothing,' she replied.