"Ach Gott!" he exclaimed, on seeing the grinning hag and the miserable grenadier, who already looked grey and worn; "what the devil is this you have done, Herr Colonel?"
"I obeyed your majesty's singular command," replied my father, haughtily.
"Is this the woman to whom you have married Otto Vogelwiede, the premier grenadier of my Guards?"
"'Tis the woman who bore your majesty's somewhat peremptory order, as all the corps can testify."
"Der teufel! she is no more to compare to the one who received it, than a cup of Dresden dima is to a bowl of Bunzlau clay! But I shall find her out yet, and married she shall be to the next tallest man in the battalion, so sure as Heaven hears me! and as for you, Colonel—dummer teufel—as for you——"
"No more dummer teufel (blockhead) than yourself, Frederick of Prussia," exclaimed my father, furiously. "This to me? Have you forgotten my services, and that day at Amoneburg, when side by side we built up breastworks of the fallen dead, and fired over them?"
"I have not Herr Colonel; but potztausend!—"
"Remember that I am the well-born Warriston von Warriston, which in plain Scottish means of that ilk, and I shall not be sworn at even by a king of Prussia."
Frederick danced with rage in his old jackboots, and dashed his Rosbach pipe upon the floor, exclaiming—
"Out of my sight, sir! Begone to your Bergschotten.* I have done with you!"