Note 2 — Chapter VI · NORTH TIROL—UNTERINNTHAL (RIGHT INN-BANK). SCHWATZ.

A repeated knocking at last brought a buxom maid out of the cow-shed, who seemed not a little amazed at our apparition. ‘Had she any coffee! coffee, at that time of day—of course not!’ True, the unpunctuality of the train, the delivery of superfluous luggage to the care of the station-master, and our lingering by the way, had brought us to past nine o’clock—an unprecedented hour for breakfast in Schwatz. ‘Couldn’t we be content with wine? in a couple of hours meat would be ready, as the carters came in to dine then.’ Meat and coffee at the same repast, and either at that hour, were ideas she could not at first take in. Nevertheless, when we detailed our needs, astonishment gave way to compassion, and she consented to drop her incongruous propositions, and to make us happy in our own way. Accordingly, she was soon busied in lighting a fire, running to fetch coffee and rolls—though she did not, as happened to me in Spain, ask us to advance the money for the commission—and very soon appeared with a tray full of tumblers and queer old crockery. The black beverage she at last provided consisted of a decoction of nothing nearer coffee than roasted corn, figs,2 or acorns; and the rolls had the strangest resemblance to leather; but the milk and eggs were fine samples of dairy produce, for which Schwatz is famous, and these and the luscious fruit made up for the rest.