"Comrades on the straw—eh! What a bed for his lordship. Misérables! they have no conception of the importance of rank, these benighted forest folk. Yet give me the clean, yellow straw, smelling in the dark of sunshine and whispering of the fields, rather than your stuffy German mountains of feathers."
"Geiger-Onkel! Geiger-Onkel!" came a shrill cry into the night.
The fiddler turned with a bound and ran into the middle of the moonlit yard, staring up at the house that stood outlined against the pale sky. From some distant regions, where Friedel's underlings kennelled near their hounds, rose shouts of boorish laughter and the chorus of a drinking song.
A yellow tongue of flame appeared in a wooden balcony, hanging under the roof. Sidonia bent over, shielding her candle from the forest airs.
"Are you there, Geiger-Onkel?"
"Yes, child."
"Oh, I am glad.... Geiger-Onkel"—she leaned over still further; her tresses hung down, one shone ruddy with the candle-gleam and one silver in the moonlight; her voice was broken with angry tremors—"he tried to kiss me!"
"Mort de ma vie—who?"
"The big man with the whip. He caught me by the waist. I had nothing to hit him with but my plaits. I lashed him in the face. They caught him across the eyes——"
"Caught him across the eyes," cried the fiddler, clapping his hands. "Ah, brava, little mamzell!"