The Italian host the traveller would often see before the inn came in sight; sometimes the latter would have touts as far away as seven or eight leagues to buttonhole foreigners, carry their luggage, promise anything and behave with the utmost servility—till the morning of departure. But with all this to expect them to provide clean sheets was expecting too much, and as the nation was grievously afflicted with the itch, it was desirable for the visitor to carry his own bedding. In many cases, too, we find the tourist sleeping on a table in his clothes to avoid the dirtiness of the bed, or the vermin. Still, in Italy, you shared your bed with these permanent occupants only, as a rule; in Spain you were sure to do so; one man, one bed, was the custom there—a result of the enforcement of the penalty of burning alive for sodomy. In Germany the custom was just the reverse; in fact, if the tourist did not find a companion for himself, the host chose for him, and his bedfellow might be a gentleman, or he might be a carter; all that could safely be prophesied about him was that he would be drunk when he came to bed. The bed would be one of several in a room; the covering a quilt, warm enough to be too warm for summer, and narrow enough to leave one side of each person exposed in winter. This is supposing there were beds: in northern Germany rest for the night would be on a bench in a "stove," as they called the room, because the stove was so invariably part of the furniture that the words "room" and "stove" became synonymous. Windows were never opened at night, to retain the heat in the room; all the travellers lay there, men and women, gentlemen and "rammish clowns," as near the stove as they could manage. The heat was such that the effect on one unaccustomed to it was "as if a snake was twining about his legs." Further, if several met together, says a Frenchman, one might as well try to sleep in a market-place on market-day. In upper Germany, the bedrooms were separate, without fires or the means of making one, and the change from the one temperature to the other was very trying. As many beds were put in a room as the room would hold; fairly clean ones, however, as the Germans treated them with some disinfectant. In Saxony there were no beds, no benches, no stove, even. All lay in the straw among the cows, the chief disadvantage of which was that your pillow was liable to be eaten in the night. So in Poland, too, where it meant a cold and dangerous night, in the country parts, at least, for any one who did not adapt himself to the custom of the country by using the long coat lined with wolfskins which served the Pole as cloak by day and bedding by night.