This doctor went afterwards in company with M. de Montaigne to visit a grand and sumptuous monastery, where Mass was being said, and he entered and bided there without removing his headgear until M. d’Estissac and M. de Montaigne had finished their prayers. They next went to view in a cellar of the abbey a long cylinder-shaped fragment of stone,[59] which apparently had once formed part of a column. On it, written in easily legible Latin letters, was an inscription telling how the Emperors Pertinax and Antonius Verus had repaired all the roads and bridges for a distance of eleven thousand paces around Campidonium, that is to say, Kempten, whither we were bound for the night. This stone might have been set up to record some later repair of the road, for report says that this village of Isny is of no great antiquity. In any case, having inspected all the roads about Kempten, we could find no repairs worthy of such artificers, and there was not a single bridge. We certainly remarked that a way had been cut through some of the hills, but this work was not of prime importance. [Illustration: KEMPTEN _From Civitates Orbis Terrarum_ _To face p. 116_, vol. i. ] Kempten, three leagues farther on, is a town as big as St. Foy, handsome, populous, and abounding in good lodgings. We stayed at the “Bear,” an excellent house. At our meals they brought in great silver vessels of various kinds (these in sooth were intended to serve merely as ornaments, being richly worked and covered with the arms of divers gentlemen), the sort of plate which is only to be seen in houses of high quality. Here it was that we were brought to see the truth of an observation which M. de Montaigne had made elsewhere, to wit, that if foreigners ignore certain usages favoured by ourselves, it is because they hold these usages in slight esteem. For instance, these people, though they possess vast store of pewter utensils as well scoured as those at Montaigne, will only make use of wooden platters, which indeed are both well made and well kept. In all these countries they put cushions on the seats in the evening, and nearly all the panelled ceilings of the apartments are vaulted half-moon fashion, which gives them a very graceful appearance. As to the linen, concerning which we had previously made certain complaints, we had no occasion to be dissatisfied; indeed, as far as my master was concerned,[60] I never failed to procure enough of the same wherewith to fashion a pair of curtains for his bed, and whenever he happened to want an extra towel it was always given to him. In this town lives a certain merchant who carries on a traffic of a hundred thousand florins annually in linen. M. de Montaigne, on leaving Constance, would fain have visited that canton of Switzerland[61] which supplies linen for the whole of Christendom, if there had not been four or five hours needed for crossing the lake and back to Lindau. This town (Kempten) is Lutheran,