So I went back to the inn of The Golden Stag, and, climbing some steps,
I made a loud noise. A woman came, and I asked for food. She led me
through a room where were enormous barrels, ten feet in diameter, lying
fatly on their sides; then through a large stone-clean kitchen, with
bright pans, ancient as the Meistersinger; then up some steps and into
the long guest-room, where a few tables were laid for supper.
A few people were eating. I asked for Abendessen, and sat by the window
looking at the darkness of the river below, the covered bridge, the dark
hill opposite, crested with its few lights.
Then I ate a very large quantity of knoedel soup and bread, and drank
beer, and was very sleepy. Only one or two village men came in, and
these soon went again; the place was dead still. Only at a long table on
the opposite side of the room were seated seven or eight men, ragged,
disreputable, some impudent--another came in late; the landlady gave
them all thick soup with dumplings and bread and meat, serving them in a
sort of brief disapprobation. They sat at the long table, eight or nine
tramps and beggars and wanderers out of work and they ate with a sort of
cheerful callousness and brutality for the most part, and as if
ravenously, looking round and grinning sometimes, subdued, cowed, like
prisoners, and yet impudent.
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