The Blue Flower. Candia McWilliam

deals now with all our properties. This month he is at Oberwiederstadt.’

      Fritz took a place in the diligence, which left the Stag in Weissenfels at four in the morning, and went by way of Halle and Eisleben. The German diligence was the slowest in Europe, since all the luggage, which was loaded onto a kind of creaking extension of the floor extending over the back axle, had to be unloaded and re-loaded every time a passenger got in or out. While the conductor supervised this work the driver fed himself and his horses, on loaves of coarse brown bread.

      At the Black Boy at Eisleben a farm servant was sitting on the bench outside, waiting for him.

      ‘Grüss dich, Joseph,’ said Fritz, remembering him from seven years back. ‘Let us go into the grocer’s and take a glass of schnaps.’ In Saxony the inns were not allowed to sell spirits.

      ‘I should be sorry to see your father’s son diverting himself in such a way,’ Joseph replied.