'Lick your chaps, ye beasts, and don't say Werner stints vermin good cheer his nuptial-night. Now,' continued the Baron, growing huskier as he talked louder: 'Short and ringing, my devil's pups:—Werner and his Bride! and may she soon give you a young baron to keep you in better order than I can, as, if she does her duty, she will.'
The Baron stood up, and lifted his huge arm to lead the toast.
'Werner and his Bride!'
Not a voice followed him. There was a sudden intimation of the call being echoed; but it snapped, and ended in shuffling tones, as if the hall-door had closed on the response.
'What 's this?' roared the Baron, in that caged wild beast voice
Margarita remembered she had heard in the Cathedral Square.
No one replied.
'Speak! or I'll rot you a fathom in the rock, curs!'
'Herr Baron!' said Henker Rothhals impressively; 'the matter is, that there's something unholy among us.'
The Baron's goblet flew at his head before the words were uttered.
'I'll make an unholy thing of him that says it,' and Werner lowered at them one by one.