to stop the horse, she was left suspended in the air by her skirts. I immediately dismounted and helped her to regain her feet, to adjust her disordered dress, and to resume her seat in the saddle. On arriving at Fribourg we put up at the inn called La Croix Blanche, and soon discovered that almost everybody in the town spoke French, a language with which Thomas and I, who were Germans, were not familiar; but, thanks to our companion Robert, the Parisian, we experienced no difficulty whatever in making all our wants known and in securing all the information that we desired.
On the following day, Oct. 13th, it was raining hard when we left Fribourg, and we were soon wet to the skin. After passing through several small villages we stopped for refreshment at an inn in the picturesque town of Romont, and at the same time availed ourselves of the opportunity to have our clothes dried. Then, having satisfied our appetites, we resumed our journey in the direction of Lausanne; but we did not get very far on our way before we discovered that Thomas had disappeared. We were of course obliged to wait for him, and, by the time he had rejoined the party, darkness and a thick fog combined to render further progress very difficult, and we soon realized that we had lost our way. We wandered up and down for some time without encountering a barn or building of any kind in which we might find shelter from the rain and secure a measure of protection from the robbers who, according to common report, infested that part of the country. Finally, however, we discovered a small village; but, when we applied for a night's lodging, not one of the householders was willing to receive us. So we engaged the services of a young peasant to act as our guide, and with his assistance we finally reached a mean-looking inn in a village called Mézières, which was composed of a few widely scattered houses. We entered the tavern and found several Savoyard peasants and some beggars seated at the long table of the bar-room; they were engaged in eating roasted chestnuts and black bread, which they washed down with copious draughts of a liquor called piquette. They unceremoniously examined our weapons and acted with great rudeness toward us in other respects. The woman who kept the house said she had no other room which she could place at our disposal, and our first impulse therefore was to resume our journey immediately after we had finished our meal of black bread and chestnuts; but, after careful reflection, we came to the conclusion that such a course might prove fraught with considerable danger. So we decided to
