“Good friend!” answered the innkeeper, and he crossed himself very reverently at the same time, “it is not for man to fear, but to hope.”
“If your beds were as good as your adages,” said Essper George, laughing, “in good truth, as a friend of mine would say, I would sleep here to-night.”
“Prithee, friend,” continued the innkeeper, kissing a medal of his collar very devoutly, “what accommodation dost thou lack?”
“Why” said Essper, “in the way of accommodation, little, for two excellent beds will content us; but in the way of refreshment, by St. Hubert! as another friend of mine would swear, he would be a bold man who would engage to be as hungry before his dinner as I shall be after my supper.”
“Friend!” said the innkeeper, “Our Lady forbid that thou shouldst leave our walls to-night: for the accommodation, we have more than sufficient; and as for the refreshment, by Holy Mass! we had a priest tarry here last night, and he left his rosary behind. I will comfort my soul, by telling my beads over the kitchen-fire, and for every Paternoster my wife shall give thee a rasher of kid, and for every Ave a tumbler of Augsburg, which Our Lady forget me if I did not myself purchase but yesterday se’nnight from the pious fathers of the Convent of St. Florian!”
“I take thee at thy word, honest sir,” said Essper. “By the Creed! I liked thy appearance from the first; nor wilt thou find me unwilling, when my voice has taken its supper, to join thee in some pious hymn or holy canticle. And now for the beds!”
“There is the green room, the best bedroom in my house,” said the Innkeeper. “Holy Mary forget me if in that same bed have not stretched their legs more valorous generals, more holy prelates, and more distinguished councillors of our Lord the Emperor, than in any bed in all Austria.”
“That, then, for my master, and for myself—”
“H-u-m!” said the host, looking very earnestly in Essper’s face; “I should have thought that thou wert one more anxious after dish and flagon than curtain and eider-down!”
“By my Mother! I love good cheer,” said Essper, earnestly, “and want it more at this moment than any knave that ever yet starved: but if thou hast not a bed to let me stretch my legs on after four-and-twenty hours’ hard riding, by holy Virgin! I will have horses on to Vienna.”