Midnight had long since struck when I was shown into the guest-room, with a triple “_Gute Nacht. Schlafen Sie wohl._” The deep wooden bedstead was, of course, a bit too short, and the triangular bolster and two large pillows, taking the place of the French round _traversin_, had to be reduced to American tastes. But the room was speckless; several minor details of comfort had been arranged with motherly care, and as I slid down under the feather tick that does duty as quilt throughout Germany my feet encountered—a hot flat-iron. I had not felt so old since the day I first put on long trousers! My last conscious reflection was a wonder whether the good citizens of Trier were not, perhaps, “stringing” us a bit with their aggressive show of friendliness, of contentment at our presence. Some of it had been a bit _too_ thick. Yet, as I thought back over the evening, I could not recall a word, a tone, a look, that gave the slightest basis to suppose that my three hostesses were not the simple, frank, docile _Volk_ they gave every outward evidence of being. The breakfast next morning consisted of coffee and bread, with more of the tasteless turnip jelly. All three of the articles, however, were only in the name what they purported to be, each being _Ersatz_, or substitute, for the real thing. The coffee was really roasted corn, and gave full proof of that fact by its insipidity. But Frau Franck served me real sugar with it. The bread—what shall one say of German war-bread that will make the picture dark and heavy and indigestible enough? It was cut from just such a loaf as I had seen gaunt soldiers of the Kaiser hugging under one arm as they came blinking up out of their dugouts at the point of a doughboy bayonet, and to say that such a loaf seemed to be half sawdust and half mud, that it was heavier and blacker than any adobe brick, and that its musty scent was all but overpowering, would be far too mild a statement and the comparison an insult to the mud brick. The mother claimed it was made of potatoes and bad meal. I am sure she was over-charitable. Yet on this atrocious substance, which I, by no means unaccustomed to strange food, tasted once with a shudder of disgust, the German masses had been chiefly subsisting since 1915. No wonder they quit! The night before the bread had been tolerable, having been brought from the country; but the three women had stayed up munching that until the last morsel had disappeared.