"Why, what's the matter?" asks my father.
"There are six rascally French Chasseurs in the courtyard at the Schloss,--and the Captain of them,--he is in with the Herr,--and has forgotten his manners,--and has drawn his sword, and is brandishing it before the eyes of the Herr, and the Herr stands fixed to the spot, and doesn't move an inch; for he knows about as much of French as the cow does of Sunday."
"The devil!" said my father and jumped up, for he was a quick, determined man, and did not know what fear meant.
When he entered the room, the Frenchman was rushing about like a wild beast, and the words came sputtering out of his mouth like the beer from a barrel without a bung. The Amtshauptmann was standing quite still, and had his French pocket dictionary in his hand, and whenever he caught a word the Frenchman said, he turned over the leaves to see what the dictionary made of it, and when my father came in, he asked: "My friend, what does the fellow want? Eh!... Ask the fellow what he wants."
My father thereupon began to speak to the Frenchman, but he was so loud and vehement, shouted and gesticulated so much, that the old Amtshauptmann asked: "What is he so excited for, friend?" Well, at last my father got out of the Frenchman what it was he wanted:--"fifteen fat oxen, and a load of corn, and seven hundred ells of green cloth, and a hundred louisd'ors;"--and a great deal "doo vang," (as my father told the Amtshauptmann) for himself, and his men besides. "My friend," then said the old Herr, "tell the fellow he is a scound...."
"Stop!" cried my father, "don't say that word, Herr Amtshauptmann, he will often have heard it lately, and maybe he understands it. No, I advise that we should give him plenty 'doo vang' now, it will be time enough to think of the rest afterwards." And the Herr Amtshauptmann agreed, and ordered Fritz Sahlmann to get glasses and wine from Mamsell Westphalen, "but not the best."
Well, the wine comes, and my father fills the Frenchman's glass and the Frenchman fills my father's, and they drink and fill alternately, and my father soon says: "Herr Amtshauptmann, you must sit down too and help me, for this fellow is a cask without a bottom."
"My friend," answered the Amtshauptmann, "I am an old man and the chief justiciary in his Grace's bailiwick of Stemhagen; it is not fitting that I should sit and drink with this fellow."