The Italians and even the Turks had strong objections to the number
thirteen, and it never appeared on any of the doors on the streets of
Paris, where, to avoid thirteen people sitting down to dinner, persons
named Quatorziennes were invited to make a fourteenth:
_Jamais on ne devrait
Se mettre a table treize,
Mais douze c'est parfait_.
My brother thought the saying was only a catch, for it would be equally
true to say all would die as one. He was quite prepared to run the risk
of being the thirteenth to sit down to dinner, but that was when he felt
very hungry, and even hinted that there might be no necessity for the
others to sit down at all!
But we must return to Totnes and its bridge, and follow the long narrow
street immediately before us named Fore Street until we reach "the
Arch," or East Gate. The old-fashioned houses to the right and left were
a great attraction to my brother, who had strong antiquarian
predilections, and when he saw the old church and castle, he began to
talk of staying there for the rest of the day and I had some difficulty
in getting him along. Fortunately, close at hand there was a quaint
Elizabethan mansion doing duty as a refreshment house, with all manner
of good things in the windows and the word "Beds" on a window in an
upper storey.
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