The doors were locked; Hanchen armed herself with a broom, Corlin with a poker, Fritz Sahlmann with a long brass ladle; and Mamsell Westphalen took up a pestle; but she quickly let it drop again, exclaiming--
"No, merciful heavens! I have done enough harm already without slaying and killing besides. No, I know what will do better;" and she fetched the box in which the peat-ashes were carried away, and set it down before her on the table--from this point she could command both front and back-doors.--"Now let them come when they like," she said, "but whoever gets a volley in the face from me may rub his eyes for a long time before he'll be able to see again."
It was not long before they heard a voice at the back-door crying: "All's well;" and presently the same voice said half aloud through the keyhole "Pickled pork."
"That's the Rathsherr," said Mamsell Westphalen, "Corlin, open the door just wide enough for a man to pass, and, as soon as he is inside, shut it fast again."
So Corlin opens the door a little way, and the Rathsherr proceeds to squeeze through; but in the process the cape of his cloak falls back, and reveals the cocked hat and the red uniform collar.
"Ah! Ah!"--screamed Corlin, and held the Rathsherr fast in the door. "A Frenchman! The French!"
"Pickled pork," cried Rathsherr Herse. "Don't you hear? Pickled pork."
But it came too late; Hanchen had knocked the hat off his head and the skin off his face with her broom, and Mamsell Westphalen had thrown two hands full of ashes into his eyes.
My uncle Herse now stood in the kitchen, puffing, and blowing, and snorting and groping with his hands out, as if he were playing at "blind man's buff,"--his heart full of rage, and dark night before his eyes. His whole plan had turned out a nest of addled eggs; for what is there in a secret that becomes a kitchen scene! what can an imposing face do when it is battered about by a broom! and what becomes of the splendour of a Rathsherr's uniform when peat-ashes lie on it like blight on a flower!
The first who recovered her senses, and became aware who it was that they had been treating in this fashion, was Hanchen. With one bound she was out of doors in the rain. Corlin followed and said to her--"I'd rather be wet through, than get one of Mamsell Westphalen's scoldings."