Nearly two hours having been spent in examining the different objects just described, we began to feel that food and drink would be acceptable; and our guide,--a civil woman,--having assured us that both were to be procured in the cottage below, to it we adjourned. The bill of fare, however, consisted merely of brown bread,--sour, as all German brown bread is, and made of rye,--of butter and beer. Nobody has a right to complain who has at his disposal a competent supply of good brown bread and butter; but to our unpractised palates, the rye-meal, and sour leaven, were not very inviting. Still we set to work, and aided by a cat, and a fine bold fellow of a dunghill cock, both of whom took post beside us, and insisted on sharing our meal, we made a pretty considerable inroad into the good woman's vivres, whose butter and beer were both of them excellent. This, with a rest of half an hour, made us feel up to our work; so we disbursed our groschen or two, strapped on our packs, and pursued our journey. Gabel was our point, towards which from Hayde a good chaussee runs; but we had no disposition to retrace our steps to Hayde,--so, trusting in part to the map, in part to the directions which our good-natured hostess gave us, we struck across the country at a venture. Probably we did not commit a greater number of blunders than any other persons similarly circumstanced would have done, but the way seemed at once intricate and interminable. I doubt, indeed, whether we should have succeeded in reaching our destination at all, had we not, by good fortune, overtaken in the heart of a wood an honest countryman, who was journeying towards his home in the fair village of Leipsige, and volunteered to be so far our guide. We found him intelligent enough on his own topic of agriculture, and well inclined to communicate to us his family history; but he knew nothing about either Peter of Prague, or the gypsies, and had never seen either Napoleon or his troops. We were, therefore, forced to take his guidance on his own terms, and had to thank him for probably some errors shunned, and a good deal of anxiety avoided.