"Why, you see, Alouise, Buonaparte is sure to get the better of us in the end, so he may as well beat us at once and have done with it."
"Perhaps he won't beat us in the end."
"Oh, yes, he will."
"That's no argument. Why don't you go and help fight?"
"Thank you, I'm not that way inclined. I told Atzwanger I'd sprained my trigger-finger. What's all that hammering about, up stairs? Are you putting up defences?"
"Oh, no! A poor lame man lodges in our attic, who is amusing himself by making a barrel-organ, with a curious set of dancing automatons at the top. His whole heart is in it. He thinks the Tyrolese war nothing in comparison. Indeed, I doubt if he knows there is one."
"Oh, come!"
"Well, I'll take him up his breakfast, and hear what he has to say about it; and you can hear what I say and what he says, if you prick up your ears."
Leopold went to the foot of a dark, steep back-stair, up which Alouise tripped, with a coffee-pot and some bread; and after she had tapped at the door he heard the following dialogue:—
"Come in!"