When the landlady was asked for the promised coffee, she brought out a small earthenware pitcher containing a black liquid, and proceeded to bury its lower extremity in the hot embers of the wood fire, by which means the liquid was speedily warmed up, and also thickened with unnecessary ashes.

When served--in the same dusty pitcher--it had a green and mouldy taste, combined with a sour bitterness which made it utterly impossible as an article of food, and so the breakfast was confined to the rejected fragments of the loaf of the preceding night.
The guide, or comrade as he preferred to call himself, appeared in good time, and we started about half-past six, under a sun already oppressively hot, and through heavy flaky dust, which made us feel very thankful when our route branched off from the high road.

Liotir was strong in mulberry trees and vines, for he was a keeper of silkworms, and a wine-merchant.

Silkworms had not been profitable for a year or two, and he was almost in low spirits when he talked of them.[94] An epidemic had visited the district, and the worms ate voraciously and refused to spin--a disease which he believed to be beyond the power of medicine.[95] As is so often the case with the Frenchman, as compared with the Englishman of corresponding social status, he had his information cut and dried, and poured it out without hesitation.
Silkworms' eggs cost 15, 20, or 25 francs an ounce, according to quality; and an ounce of good seed should produce from two to three hundred francs' worth of cocoons.

A man who 'makes' an ounce of seed requires six tables, 8 feet by 4, for his cages; and as some men make thirty-five ounces, chambers of great size are necessary for the accommodation of their worms; but breeders to so large an extent as this are the princes of the trade.