Book VI - Chapter 1
The green and bowery summer had passed away. It was midnight when two horsemen pulled up their steeds beneath a wide oak; which, with other lofty trees, skirted the side of a winding road in an extensive forest in the south of Germany.
“By heavens!” said one, who apparently was the master, “we must even lay our cloaks, I think, under this oak; for the road winds again, and assuredly cannot lead now to our village.”
“A starlit sky in autumn can scarcely be the fittest curtain for one so weak as you, sir; I should recommend travelling on, if we keep on our horses’ backs till dawn.”
“But if we are travelling in a directly contrary way to our voiturier, honest as we may suppose him to be, if he find in the morning no paymaster for his job, he may with justice make free
