The pretty Tyrolese hostess, whose face was so charmingly set off by the trim smartness of her velvet bodice and scarlet petticoat, together with various silver chains, gleefully returned to her parlour and her burly good-tempered husband, after attending the ladies to their apartments. She had seen the Comtesse de Cernes without her furs and travelling mask, dressed in lilac camlet turned up with silk; so handsome, so gracious, so talkative, that the hostess thought she must be French; for the hostess had seen plenty of French people before now, besides Flemings. The comtesse was dark-haired and dark-eyed; her sister, who had also divested herself of her mask, did not equal her in appearance. Every one at the inn was glad that the amiable party from Flanders were going to rest there four days.
Their supper was ordered in a private room, where the host and hostess waited on them in person, and consequently had the best of it with the loungers afterwards. The two gentlemen were in good spirits, and the hostess thought their talk none the less amusing for being in a language which she did not understand. Their laughing looks and easy action conveyed to her mind a sufficient sense of fun to make her fair face shine placidly in sympathy. Altogether they were the liveliest Flemings she had ever seen; and their good-humour seemed to be shared by the three postillions, two of whom were Walloons and one Italian, and who were making themselves very popular among the habitués of the inn.
‘Well, this is a pleasant little town of yours, mes amis,’ said the vivacious Walloon outrider, who contrasted strikingly with his great, tall, quietly smiling companion. ‘One could die of ennui here as well as at Liege.’
‘No, you could not,’ returned a long spare poetic Tyrolese, who spent most of his evenings at the inn, but never drank; notwithstanding which peculiarity he and the host were warm friends. ‘We mountain-folk are not dull; our hills and our torrents permit of no dullness.’
‘Very well perhaps for you who are born to it, to hang by your eyelids on rocky ledges, or balance yourselves over what are called in verses the silver threads of waterfalls, in pursuit of an undoubtedly clever and pretty little animal; but all that would be dull work to us. And then you have not a noblesse. What should we do without ours? There would be no one to whom one could be postillion.’
‘We are our own noblesse,’ said the spare poetic Tyrolese.
‘And you cannot say, Claude,’ observed the tall Walloon, ‘that Innsbruck is without noblesse at the present moment; nay more, it contains royalty in the shape of two captive princesses!’
‘One of them the grand-daughter of the hero who saved this empire from the Turks, for which the Emperor now keeps her in durance.’
‘Take care, Monsieur,’ said the host (he pronounced ‘Monsieur’ execrably); ‘we are all the Kaiser’s loyal subjects here in Tyrol.’
‘Pardon, mein Wirth,’ replied Claude, who pronounced German as badly as the host did French. ‘You know we men who run about the world laugh at everything, and too often let our tongues run faster than our feet.’