CHAPTER XIII.
If the landlady of the Red Cow had been an Italian she would have poisoned my victuals, but as she was a Dutchwoman she only cooked them as badly as possible. In fact, we experienced the very next day the result of her feminine revenge. The first dish was no soup. That was awful, especially for a man brought up decently as I was, who from youth upwards had had soup every day, and who had hitherto never imagined that there was a world where the sun never shone and man soup never knew. The second course was beef, as cold and hard as Myron's cow. Then followed fish, which had indeed an ancient and fish-like smell, and which went untouched in silence as it came. Then came a great, old spectre of a hen, which, far from satisfying our hunger, looked so wretchedly lean and hungry that we, out of sympathetic pity, could not touch it.
"And now, little Samson," cried the burly Dricksen, "dost thou still believe in God? Is this just? The Bandage-baggage visits Schnabelewopski in the dark watches of the night, and on that account we must starve by daylight!"
"O God, God!" sighed the little fellow, vilely vexed by such atheistic outbreak, and
