Here Leibgeber clasped the father of the city with his two fingers as if they had been iron rivets, grasped his shoulders as one does the pommel of a saddle at mounting, clamped him firmly into his chair, and thundered out, “You never wrote anything of the kind, did you? you smooth-tongued, grey-headed old scoundrel! Stop your grunting, or I’ll throttle you! never wrote the letter, eh? keep quiet—if you lift a finger, my dog will tear your windpipe out. Answer me quietly you say you never received any letter on the subject, do you?”

“I had rather say nothing,” whispered Blasius, “evidence given under coercion is valueless.”

Here Siebenkæs drew his friend away from the Heimlicher, but Leibgeber said to the dog, “Mordax! hooy, Sau.,” took the glass periwig from the head of the servant of the state, broke off the principal curls of it, and said to Siebenkæs (Saufinder lay ready to spring), “Screw him down yourself, if the dog is not to do it, that he may listen to me. I want to say one or two pretty things to him—don’t let him say ‘Pap!’—Herr Heimlicher von Blasius, I have not the slightest intention of making use of libellous or abusive language to you, or of spouting an improvised pasquinade; I merely tell you, that you are an old rascal, a robber of orphans, a varnished villain, and everything else of the kind—for instance, a Polish bear, whose footmarks are just like a human being’s.[[16]] The epithets which I here make use of, such as scoundrel—Judas—gallows-bird” (at each word he struck the glass turban like a cymbal against his other hand), “skunk, leech, horse-leech—nominal definitions such as these are not abuse, and do not constitute libel, firstly because, according to ‘L. § de injur.,’ the grossest abuse may be uttered in jest, and I am in jest here—and we may always make use of abusive language in maintaining our own rights—see ‘Leyser.’[[17]] Indeed, according to Quistorp’s ‘Penal Code,’ we may accuse a person of the gravest crimes without animus injurandi, provided that he has not been already tried and punished for them. And has your honesty ever been put on its trial and punished, you cheating old grey-headed vagabond? I suppose you are like the Heimlicher in Freyburg[[18]]—rather a different sort of man to you, it’s to be hoped—and have half-a-dozen years or so, during which no one can lay hold of you—but I’ve got hold of you to-day, hypocrite! Mordax!” The dog looked up at this word of command.

“Let him go, now,” Siebenkæs begged, compassionating the prostrate sinner.

“In a moment; but don’t you put me in a fury, please,” said Leibgeber, letting fall the plucked wig, standing on it, and taking out his scissors and black paper, “I want to be quite calm while I clip out a likeness of the padded countenance of this portentous cotton-nightcap of a creature, because I shall take it away with me as a gage d’amour. I want to carry this ecce homunculus about with me half over the world, and say to everybody, ‘Hit it, bang away at it well; blessed is he who doth not depart this life till he hath thrashed Heimlicher Blasius of Kuhschnappel; I would have done it myself if I had not been far too strong.’

“I shan’t be able,” he went on, turning to Siebenkæs, and finishing a good portrait, “to give that sneak and sharper there an account by word of mouth of my success, for a whole year to come; but by that time the one or two little touches of abuse which I have just lightly applied to him will be covered by the statute of limitations, and we shall be as good friends as ever again.”

Here he unexpectedly requested Siebenkæs to stay by Saufinder—whom he had constituted into a corps of observation by a motion of his finger—as he was obliged to leave the room for a moment. On the last occasion of his being in Blaise’s grand drawing-room (where he displayed his magnificence before the Kuhschnappel world, great and small), he had noticed the paper-hangings there, and an exceedingly ingenious stove, in the form of the goddess of justice, Themis, who does, indeed, singe as frequently as she merely warms. And this time he had brought with him a camel’s-hair pencil, and a bottle of an ink made from cobalt dissolved in aquafortis, with a little muriatic acid dropped into it. Unlike the black cloth ink, which is visible at first and disappears afterwards, the sympathetic ink here spoken of is invisible at first, and only comes out a green colour on the paper when it is warmed. Leibgeber now wrote with his camel’s-hair pencil and this ink the following invisible notification on the paper which was closest to the stove, or Themis.

“The Goddess of Justice hereby protests in presence of this assembly against being thus set up in effigy, and warmed and cooled (if not absolutely hanged), at the pleasure of the Heimlicher von Blaise, who is long since condemned at her inner secret tribunal.

“Themis.”

Leibgeber came away, leaving the silent seed of this Priestley’s green composition behind him on the wall with the pleasing certainty that next winter, some evening when the drawing-room was nicely warmed by the goddess for a party, the whole dormant green crop would all of a sudden shoot lustily forth.