When dinnertime comes there will be a great rush for the hall, but the ceremonies of the table will be told later.[12] Of course, on common days one will not expect a banquet--only one or two plates of meat, some fish, a few vegetables, bread, and common wine, but all in abundance. Hunger seldom troubles St. Aliquis. If the weather is fine, very likely dinner and supper will be served in the garden, outside the barbican, under pleasant shade trees, close to the purling Rapide. There will be long tables covered with linen dyed with Montpellier scarlet. The honored guests will have cushioned benches; the remainder will sit on almost anything.[13] Supper may be either in the hall or in the garden, according to circumstances. It is a long time between dinner and supper, and appetites are again keen. After supper, if by the presence of jongleurs there are excuses for torches and music, the castle folk join in diversions or even in dancing, until a large silver cup is solemnly handed to the baron. He drinks deeply. All his guests are similarly served. Then he rises and the company goes to bed. If there are honored visitors, Conon will escort them to their chambers himself, and take another sup of wine with them ere parting for the night. The seneschal meantime makes a careful round of the walls, to satisfy himself that the outer drawbridge is raised, the sentries posted, and that everything is safe. Then he will transmit the ponderous keys to be taken to the baron's room till dawn. The seigneur is undressed by his squires and reposes under an avalanche of feather beds thick enough to provide a vapor bath. Soon all the lights are extinguished throughout the whole black mass of the castle, save only the tall taper in the master's apartment. So the castle sleeps through the darkness, unbroken save for the occasional "All is well!" from the yawning sentry on the turret, until the thrushes and blackbirds begin their noise in the garden and in the trees by the rivers. Then again St. Aliquis resumes its daytime business. FOOTNOTES: [7] Hospitality sometimes went to such a point that we are told the ladies of the castle assisted a visiting knight to take a complete bath--a service quite innocently rendered and accepted. Similar customs, of course, obtained among the Greeks of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. [8] See ch. xvii. [9] See ch. xxii. [10] Even when sums of money are mentioned in connection with peasants' dues, etc., one may guess that often payments in kind are really in question. [11] See ch. xi. [12] See ch. vii. [13] Mediæval men did not use the floor to the extent of the Chinese and Japanese, but they were certainly often willing to dispense with seats even indoors, and to sit on their haunches upon the pavement or rushes, "Turk fashion." Chapter IV: Games and Diversions. Falconry and Hunting. The Baroness' Garden.