I sat down at the table, and a young, pretty girl came in to wait on me.  I made all sorts of gallant speeches to her, which she did not understand, but watched me curiously while I applied myself to the viands with evident enjoyment; they were delicious.  When I had finished and rose from table, she took a candle and conducted me to another room, where were a sofa, a small mirror, and a magnificent bed with green silk curtains.  I inquired by signs whether I were to sleep there.  She nodded assent, but I could not undress while she stood beside me as if she were rooted to the spot.  At last I went and got a large glass of wine from the table in the next room, drank it off, and wished her “Felicissima notte!” for I had managed to learn that much Italian.  But while I was emptying the glass at a draught she suddenly burst into a fit of suppressed giggling, grew very red, and went into the next room, closing the door behind her.  “What is there to laugh at?” thought I in a puzzle.  “I believe Italians are all crazy.”

Still in anxiety lest the postilion should begin to blow his horn again, I listened at the window, but all was quiet outside.  “Let him blow!” I thought, undressed myself, and got into the magnificent bed, where I seemed to be fairly swimming in milk and honey!  The old linden in the court-yard rustled, a rook now and then flew off the roof, and at last, completely happy, I fell asleep.

CHAPTER VI

When I awoke, the beams of early morning were shining on the green curtains of my bed.  At first I could not remember where I was.  I seemed to be still driving in the coach, where I had been dreaming of a castle in the moonlight, and of an old witch and her pale daughter.

I sprang hastily out of bed, dressed myself, and, looking about my room, perceived in the wainscoting a small door, which I had not seen the night before.  It was ajar; I opened it, and saw a pretty little room looking very fresh and neat in the early dawn.  Some articles of feminine apparel were lying in disorder over the back of a chair, and in a bed beside it lay the girl who had waited upon me the evening before.  She was sleeping soundly, her head resting upon her bare white arm, over which her black curls were straying.  “How mortified she would be if she knew that the door was open!” I said to myself, and I crept back into my room, bolting the door after me, that the girl might not be horrified and ashamed when she awoke.

Not a sound was yet to be heard outside, except from an early robin that was singing his morning song, perched upon a spray growing out of the wall beneath my window.  “No,” said I, “you shall not shame me by singing all alone your early hymn of praise to God!” I hastily fetched my fiddle, which I had laid upon the table the night before, and left the room.  Everything in the castle was silent as death, and I was a long while finding my way through the dim corridors out into the open air.