Page:Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (Volume 2).djvu/71

 is there any foundation for this report, or shall I give the foul defamers the lie?”

To this the knight replied: “Report has, in this instance, told the truth; and there is no such saying among the people quite destitute of foundation. I shall explain to you, however, the real circumstances of this affair. I receive every stranger who comes to my gates, and share my food and my goblet with him. But I am a simple German of the old school, who speaks as he thinks, and I expect that my guests should be also cheerful and confident, and enjoy with me what I have, and freely ask for what they want. But there are some people who teaze me with all sorts of follies, and make a fool of me, with their bowing and scraping, who never speak openly, and use many words without sense or meaning; they want to flatter me with their smooth tongues, and behave at meals like foolish women. If I say eat! they take with great apparent reluctance a miserable bone which I should not offer to my dog: if I say drink! they scarcely wet their lips with the good wine, as if they despised the bounties