When he looked round, he found that neither Timar nor Almira was there. Timar had gone to the attic to sleep, where he soon made himself a couch of fragrant hay, while Almira had crept into some cranny in the great mass of rock.
He turned his chair round, but not till he had drained the last drop from the wine-jug and the glasses of the other guests. Then he cut a splinter from the chair he was sitting on, and picked his teeth with it, like a person who has thoroughly deserved his supper.
Night had set in; travelers weary of knocking about want no rocking. Timar had stretched himself on the soft sweet hay very comfortably, and thought that to-night he would sleep like a king. But he deceived himself. It is not easy to fall asleep after hard work, which has been mingled with varied emotions. Successive shapes besieged his bed like a chaotic panorama: a confusion of pursuing forms, threatening rocks, water-falls, ruined castles, strange women, black dogs, white cats; and amid it all a howling tempest, blasts of the horn, cracking of whips, showers of gold, laughing, whispering, and screaming human voices.
And all at once people began to speak in the room below. He recognized the voices, the hostess and the last comer talking together. The garret was separated from the other room only by a thin floor, and every word was audible, as if it had been whispered in the listener's ear. They spoke in suppressed tones, only now and then the man raised his voice.
"Well, Mother Therese, have you much money?" began the man.
"You know very well that I have none. Don't you know that I only barter and never take money?"
"That's very stupid. I don't like it. And what's more, I don't believe it."
"It is as I say. Whoever comes to buy my fruit brings me something for my own use. What should I do here with money?"
"I know what you could do, you could give it to me. You never think of me. When I marry Noémi you can't give her dried plums for a dowry; but you don't care about your daughter's happiness. You ought to help me, that I may get a good situation. I have just received my nomination as first dragoman at the embassy; but I have no money to get there, for my purse has been stolen, and now I shall lose my situation."
The woman answered in a calm tone, "That any one has given you any place that you could lose I don't believe; but I do believe you have a place you can't lose. That you have no money, I believe that; but that it was stolen from you I don't believe."