In the landscape of the early modern European comic novel the inn often features as a monument to digression - the perfect setting for chance encounters with strangers who always have a story to tell. This wide-ranging comparative study explores the special part played by the inn, tracing the progress of a succession of wayward heroes and narrators in five canonical texts: Cervantes's "Don Quijote", Scarron's "Roman comique", Fielding's "Joseph Andrews" and "Tom Jones", Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" and Diderot's "Jacques le fataliste". As this celebration of digressive fiction unfolds, a very different picture emerges of the novel's rise and development.