At the name of Joseph Weber, the French colonel turned half round, and looked at the Amtshauptmann as if he were going to ask him some question; but he seemed to give it up again, and looked out at the window once more. It was now signified to the Herr Amtshauptmann that he should take a seat.
"I thank you," he said, "but I did not come here to take my ease, and I am not enough accustomed to giving evidence to be able to do so sitting." He then, on being questioned, related how the chasseur had first come to him, and everything that he knew about it. And he ended his speech by saying that, if it was to be reckoned as a sin that the Miller had drunk down the chasseur, he himself must bear the blame of it, for it was at his request that the Miller had done it, and the Miller was his subordinate.
At this the judge began to laugh scornfully; the idea that the Burmeister should interfere on behalf of his baker, and the Amtshauptmann on behalf of his miller, seemed too ludicrous.
"And you laugh at that?" said the old Herr calmly, as if he were dealing with Fritz Sahlmann. "Is not that the custom in France? Are officials in your country appointed only to fleece people? Don't you stand by them when they are in difficulties and in the right? And is it not right for one to rid oneself of a rogue and vagabond by a few bottles of wine?"
Well, here was another hard hit for the French judge. "Rogue and vagabond" and a French chasseur were things that could in no way be coupled together, or rather should not be. The judge burst out in a torrent of invective.
The Herr Amtshauptmann remained unmoved, but went to the table and drew out of the Frenchman's valise one of the silver spoons. This he held up to the judge and said,--"Do you see this crest? I know it, and I know the people to whom it belongs. They are not people who would sell their silver spoons; and besides, according to my ideas, an honest soldier has something else to do than to be bargaining for silver spoons."
There was not much to be said against this, so the judge cleverly shifted his ground, and asked the Amtshauptmann how the watchmaker had come to be wearing a French uniform, and what he had been doing up at the Schloss at night?
"There you ask me too much," said the Herr Amtshauptmann; "I did not tell him to come, I only just saw him for a moment when the Miller was taking the chasseur away with him; and his spending the night at the Schloss was against my knowledge and against my will."
The judge soon saw that he could not make much of the Herr Amtshauptmann; he broke off the interview and told the old gentleman he could go, but that he must not leave the Rathhaus.
"Very well," said he, and he turned to leave. "Good day, then, till the matter is settled."