Et in fine rumor gentium.
The next day began well too, with the speech of Jean Busson ("Le Fardeau" Dieppe), who excused the faults of the French host as attributable to the civil wars, and said that whether or no religion was "reformed," cookery certainly was, and that in future the traditions of Guillot's of Amiens would be upheld. At the same time he felt he would be next door to a traitor if he owned to any serious faults, for supposing that such were imagined, French chambermaids could be trusted to keep the visitors happy (great applause). But he had a proposal to bring forward. He found they had a custom in Germany, which was also used at Bourges, which deserved extension. He referred to the watchmen who lived at the top of the town belfry and signalled the approach of travellers to those below by means of flags; at Ferrara and Bruges and elsewhere, the signalling was done with bells. Now this ought to be customary everywhere, and whereas here in Germany the watchmen descended at meal-times and made a collection at the inns, surely the municipal authorities ought to pay them. A resolution to this effect was passed unanimously.
The Low Country delegates caused considerable dissatisfaction by their memorial insisting that nobody had complaints to make of their inns, nor would there be any anywhere if pains were taken to be up-to-date and, above all things, clean. But their brethren were grateful for the warning that it was becoming the custom with travellers to slip leaden bullets into the cheese, where they found the custom in vogue of charging for it according to the difference in weight before and after it was set on the table; and agreed with them when they pointed out that the system of putting up a list of things customers might not do and fining them when these rules were transgressed, was breaking down. An innkeeper from Augsburg gave an instance; his request, he said, not to foul the walls was so far from being heeded that he kept one man at work cleaning them.
It was this member from Augsburg who brought about the unhappy ending of the Congress, for, in commenting on the Low Countrymen's strictures, he tactlessly quoted the Italian proverb "Dal hoste nuovo e dalla putana vecchia, Dio ci guarda," and then went on to lay it down as irrefutable that nobody grumbled unless he thought he had been done. This was easily avoided, he said; treat all alike; no man ever grumbled in Germany except new-comers and unreasonable people. Why? because Germans had fixed prices; the only system which was conformable with God's law. By this time the interpreters fairly trembled as they translated, but when, speaking as he did in Latin, he went on to apply to the system of variable charges the adjectives that were in daily use in theological controversy, the others understood without help and a battle ensued. First in words, beginning with shouts of "Pese al diablo," "Voto á Dios," and other Spanish expressions, of which, together with all the Italian, not even the initial letters could be printed, answered with "Bey Gott den Herrn," "Meine Seele," "Der Teufel hole dich," "Gottes Kranckheit," without, curiously enough, the use of a single one of those employed by historical novelists. To words succeeded blows; and there the Congress ended.
CHAPTER VII
ON THE ROAD
A journey is a fragment of hell.
Awliyái Efendi (1611-1679).