The fellow had, as I have said, all manner of trades by which he scraped together money: he fed with his guests and not his guests with him, and he could have plentifully fed all his household with the money they brought him in, if the skinflint had so used it: but he fed us Swabian fashion and kept a mighty deal back. At the first I ate not with his guests but with his children and household, because I had little money with me: there were but little morsels, that were like Spanish fasting-food for my stomach, so long accustomed to the hearty Westphalian diet. No single good joint of meat did we ever get but only what had been carried away a week before from the students' table, pretty well hacked at by them, and now, by reason of age, as grey as Methuselah. Over this the hostess, who must do the cooking herself (for he would pay for no maid to help her), poured a black, sour kind of gravy and bedevilled it with pepper. Yet though the bones were sucked so dry that one could have made chessmen of them, yet were they not yet done with, but were put into a vessel kept for the purpose, and when our miser had a sufficient quantity, they must be chopped up fine and all the fat that remained boiled out of them. I know not whether this was used for seasoning soup or greasing shoes. But on fast-days, of which there happened more than enough, and which were all religiously observed (for therein was our host full of scruples), we had the run of our teeth on stinking herrings, salt cod, rotten stockfish, and other decayed marine creatures: for he bought all with regard to cheapness only, and grudged not the trouble to go himself to the fish-market and to pick up what the fishmongers themselves were about to throw away. Our bread was commonly black and stale, our drink a thin, sour beer which wellnigh burst my belly, and yet must pass as fine old October. Besides all this, I learned from his German servant that in summer-time 'twas yet worse: for then the bread was mouldy, the meal full of maggots, and the best dishes were then a couple of radishes at dinner and a handful of salad at supper. So I asked him why did he stay with the old miser. He answered he was mostly travelling, and therefore must count more on the drink-money of travellers than on that mouldy old Jew, who he said would not even trust his wife and children with the cellar-key, for he grudged them even a drop of wine, and, in a word, was such a curmudgeon that his like would be hard to find; what I had seen up till now, said he, was nothing: if I did but stay there for a while I should perceive that he was not ashamed to skin a flea for its fat. Once, said he, the old fellow had brought home six pounds of tripe or chitterlings and put it in his larder: but to the great delight of his children the grating chanced to be open: so they tied a tablespoon to a stick and fished all the chitterlings out, which they then ate up half-cooked, in great haste, and gave out 'twas the cat had done it.