The bedrooms were upstairs dungeons with not a scrap of furniture except the bed, and a male servant settled inexorably who should sleep with whom. Neither money nor prayers would get a man a bed to himself here: custom forbade it sternly. You might as well have asked to monopolize a see-saw. They assigned to Gerard a man with a great black beard. He was an honest fellow enough; but not perfect; he would _not_ go to bed, and _would_ sit on the edge of it telling the wretched Gerard by force, and at length, the events of the day, and alternately laughing and crying at the same circumstances, which were not in the smallest degree pathetic or humorous, but only dead trivial. At last Gerard put his fingers in his ears, and lying down in his clothes for the sheets were too dirty for him to undress, contrived to sleep. But in an hour or two he awoke cold, and found that his drunken companion had got all the feather bed; so mighty is instinct. They lay between two beds; the lower one hard and made of straw, the upper soft and filled with feathers light as down. Gerard pulled at it, but the experienced drunkard held it fast mechanically. Gerard tried to twitch it away by surprise; but instinct was too many for him. On this he got out of bed, and, kneeling down on his bed-fellow's unguarded side easily whipped the prize away and rolled with it under the bed, and there lay on one edge of it, and curled the rest round his shoulders. Before he slept he often heard something grumbling and growling above him, which was some little satisfaction. Thus Instinct was outwitted, and victorious Reason lay chuckling on feathers, and not quite choked with dust. At peep of day Gerard rose, flung the feather bed upon his snoring companion, and went in search of milk and air. A cheerful voice hailed him in French: "What ho! you are up with the sun, comrade." "He rises betimes that lies in a dog's lair," answered Gerard, crossly. "Courage, l'ami! le diable est mort," was the instant reply. The soldier then told him his name was Denys, and he was passing from Flushing in Zealand to the duke's French dominions; a change the more agreeable to him, as he should revisit his native place, and a host of pretty girls who had wept at his departure, and should hear French spoken again. "And who are you, and whither bound?" "My name is Gerard, and I am going to Rome," said the more reserved Hollander, and in a way that invited no further confidences. "All the better; we will go together as far as Burgundy." "That is not my road." "All roads take to Rome." "Ay, but the shortest road thither is my way." "Well, then, it is I who must go out of my way a step for the sake of good company, for thy face likes me, and thou speakest French, or nearly." "There go two words to that bargain," said Gerard, coldly. "I steer by proverbs too. They do put old heads on young men's shoulders. 'Bon loup mauvais compagnon, dit le brebis:' and a soldier, they say, is near akin to a wolf."