“A queer post-station this,” I thought, when the coach stopped.  The coach door was opened, and a tall old man with a small lantern scanned me grimly from beneath his bushy eyebrows.  He then took my arm and helped me to alight from the coach as if I had been a person of quality.  Outside, before the castle door, stood a very ugly old woman in a black camisole and petticoat, with a white apron and a black cap, the long point of which in front almost touched her nose.  A large bunch of keys hung on one side of her waist, and she held in her hand an old-fashioned candelabrum with two lighted wax candles.  As soon as she saw me she began to duck and curtsey and to talk volubly.  I did not understand a word, but I scraped innumerable bows, and felt very uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, the old man had peered into every corner of the coach with his lantern, and grumbled and shook his head upon finding no trace of trunk or luggage.  The driver, without asking for the usual pour-boire, proceeded to put up the coach in an old shed on one side of the courtyard, while the old woman by all sorts of courteous signs invited me to follow her.  She showed the way with her wax candles through a long, narrow passage, and up a little stone staircase.  As we passed the kitchen a couple of maids poked their heads inquisitively through the half-open door, and stared at me, as they winked and nodded furtively to each other, as if they had never in all their lives seen a man before.  At last the old woman opened a door, and for a moment I was quite dazed; the apartment was spacious and very handsome, the ceiling decorated with gilded carving and the walls hung with magnificent tapestry portraying all sorts of figures and flowers.  In the centre of the room stood a table spread with cutlets, cakes, salad, fruit, wine, and confections, enough to make one’s mouth water.  Between the windows hung a tall mirror, reaching from the floor to the ceiling.

I must say that all this delighted me.  I stretched myself once or twice, and paced the room to and fro with much dignity, after which I could not resist looking at myself in such a large mirror.  Of a truth Herr Lionardo’s new clothes became me well, and I had caught an ardent expression of eye from the Italians, but otherwise I was just such a whey-face as I had been at home, with only a soft down on my upper lip.

Meanwhile, the old woman ground away with her toothless jaws, as if she were actually chewing the end of her long nose.  She made me sit down, chucked me under the chin with her lean fingers, called me “poverino,” and leered at me so roguishly with her red eyes that one corner of her mouth twitched half-way up her cheek as she at last left the room with a low courtesy.