Haec habiles agili praetentat pollice chordas: Tam doctas quis non possit amare manus?
Two elderly parties were likewise present who, thirty years earlier, had been the two pretty daughters of the one-eyed host of the "Red Lion" at Dordrecht, the same host who warned Van Buchell, the antiquary, when a youngster, against French girls. They were given, he said, to making advances; once one kissed him, and for a long time afterwards he did not think he could live without her.
But the belle of the congress seems to have been the daughter of the innkeeper at Bourgoin, the second post-house this side of Chambéry, since there is a marginal note against her name, evidently retained from the original, "Ista capit biscottum." This confirms the account given of her by Lord Herbert of Cherbury in his autobiography; his friends had told him she was the most beautiful girl they had ever seen, so he rode over from Lyons to see her, "and after about an hour's stay departed thence without offering so much as the least incivility." Finally there was a widow from Tours; the one from the "Three Kings," known as "La Gogueline"; the other widow of Tours, of the "Three Moors," stayed at home, fearing to endanger her reputation as the "mother of the Germans" by so long an absence. Widow Gogueline, however, told the writer that the other was better known as their stepmother and that there was a rhyme which ran:—
Quand vostre bourse est trop pleine Allez aux 'Mores' en Touraine: Je vous jure que vous serez En peu de temps en deschargez.
It was taken for granted that the president must be an Italian; and Francisco Marco of Venice was chosen for that geniality of his that in years to come was to charm James Howell. He opened the proceedings with some graceful presidential irrelevancies, commenting on the antiquity and fame of Rothenburg and so forth, and then explained the purposes of this Innkeepers' Congress as twofold. Its primary object, he said, was the advancement of God's glory; secondly, the furtherance of the interests of innkeepers and their customers, which, he added, were at bottom identical. The committee had invited certain of the delegates who were especially well acquainted with foreigners to explain, or refute, what visitors found objectionable. The assembled innkeepers could then return able to inform, each one his own countrymen, before the latter's departure, what must be looked for in the parts he was travelling towards, and how unavoidable, and even desirable, those characteristics were. The president therefore called upon Messer Bevigliano ("Chiavi d'Oro," Florence) to speak for Italy.