Meanwhile sundry persons, all of them young men, entered the tap-room, and visions of wagoners snoring on the floor beside me began again to haunt my imagination; when, to my great relief, I ascertained that these were "the miller's men," who, having eaten their supper with the female members of the family, would withdraw to their nests in the cock-loft. And truly this affair of the domestics' supper was curious enough. Heaven knows what the mess might be, which, being brought piping hot from the oven, was planted down in a brown stew-pan, right in the centre of one of the tables; but the appetites of the twelve persons who forthwith gathered round it, spoon in hand, appeared excellent. It was quite edifying to behold the order, and silence, and regularity with which, one after another, they shovelled their respective portions into their mouths; and how patiently they endured the intense heat, which, judging from the hissing of the stew, must have accompanied each ladleful. Finally, the dish being emptied, they rose with one accord, and departed, the young men to their mattresses, or, it may be, to their occupations about the mill,--the young women to fulfil what remained of their daily tasks. While this was going on, the landlord and I were keeping up an animated conversation, of which I remember nothing more than that it turned chiefly upon the state of his own family and affairs, and tended to impress me with becoming notions of his dignity. Indeed, I may state, once for all, that the landlord of a German inn, whether it be an hotel in a capital, or like this at Marchovides, a beer-shop in a remote village, is in his own eyes a person of very considerable importance. While his wife, poor soul, performs all the menial offices about you, which the domestics either cannot, or are not expected to perform, the host himself is content to keep you in talk, which he not unfrequently accomplishes by sitting down beside you, and helping you to discuss your wine or beer. Nor does it inflict the slightest wound upon your dignity, whatever your station in life may be, to fall in with his humours. If you cut him short, you may miss the opportunity of learning something which you could have wished to learn, and you are sure to suffer from the diminished attention which is shown to you ever after. If you indulge him, you may be bored for a while, it is true; but you have the satisfaction of reflecting, that you neither wounded a private man's feelings, nor offered wanton outrage to the customs of a community.