Bert. "You're right, they are. Sometimes they will crowd into that sweat-box eighty or ninety persons, footmen and horsemen, merchants, sailors, carters, farmers, boys, women, sick and well."
Will. "Why, that's a regular monastery!"
Bert. "There is one combing his hair; another wiping off his sweat, another pulling off his cowhides or his riding-boots; another smells of garlic. In short there is a confusion of men and tongues as once in the tower of Babel. But if they see a foreigner of a certain dignity they all fix their eyes upon him, staring at him as if he were some new kind of animal brought from Africa; even after they have sat down at table they screw their necks about and continue their gazing, even forgetting to eat."
Will. "At Rome, or Paris, or Venice, no one marvels at anything."
Bert. "Meanwhile it is a crime to ask for anything. When the evening is far gone and there is no prospect of any further arrivals, there appears an old servant, with white hair, a shaven head, a crooked face, and dirty clothes."
Will. "Such a fellow ought to be cupbearer to a Roman cardinal!"
Bert. "He casts his eyes about and counts the guests, and the more he finds the more he heats up the stove, though the weather be boiling hot. For in Germany it belongs to good entertainment to set everyone to dripping with sweat, and if anyone unaccustomed to this steaming opens a crack of a window to save himself from suffocation, he hears at once: 'Shut it! shut it!' and if you answer: 'I can't stand it!' you hear: 'Go find another inn then!'"
William enlarges ad nauseam on the dangers of this herding of men together, but Bertulphus answers:
"They are tough people; they laugh at these things and take no thought of them.... Now hear the rest of the story. This bearded Ganymede comes back and spreads as many tables as are enough for the guests—but, ye gods! not with linen of Miletus; one would say with the canvas of old sails. To each table he assigns at least eight guests. They who know the ways of the country drop where they are put; for there is no distinction of rich and poor, master or servant."