Below we stood under the verandah, and with us were Lossow, Frau Lossow, their four daughters, and two servants; before us in the garden a mob of some fifty, with a few women and infants, earth-born beings, one of whom bore a broomstick with a rag for flag: this was Herr Somebody!—I think the name was Voss or Huss—a sloven, red rascal like a satyr. Some few gaped silent, "like fishes," but it was evident to me that the mind of the meeting was waggish; and Langler, standing against the verandah-rail, addressed them.
He was palish, but then his brow reddened, and, on the whole, I was surprised how well he spoke, since German was strange to his tongue; he kept putting his palms to the rail and catching them up again, and bowing forward and up again, and I felt how very foreign, very trying and hard, to him all this must be; but he became earnest, speaking feelingly, and I could have cried to see him spending his soul upon that herd, appealing to them as brothers where no brotherhood was, giving them news of justice and of compassion and of passionate intrepidity, where only pigs and mugs were understood. Several times he was stopped by the ribald Herr Voss or Huss waving the broomstick, and whooping some such cry as "on to the burg, you clowns! let's souse old Tschudi in the river-water!"
"Well, now," said Langler, "let us go: all of us together: with the fixed purpose not to leave the castle without bringing back our poor prisoner with us. We will carry no weapon in our hands, no, yet we shall be great in power. Let us go; and I shall go in front, and my friend here, too, will come, to strengthen us."
I think that he was about to say more: but just now, on a sudden, behold Herr Castle-governor Tschudi in his smoking-cap standing with us. I first heard a guffaw behind me, then at once the man was beside Langler at the verandah-rail, and at once he was crying out jokes to this or the other of the crowd, cutting Langler short, asking one how his horrid old swell-foot was, assuring another that his old woman was at that very moment making a cuckold of him, egging on another to go at once to the castle to rescue the saintly and grateful Pater Dees; and the throng was roaring with laughter when, all at once, the man's face took on a look of ire that strongly reminded one of his over-lord, and he ordered them all instantly to be gone to their abodes.
Langler made not one other effort, for he was not one to strive and cry, and the power over the mob of the coarse-grained man beside him was so obvious. As the crowd began to flow away my friend turned to me, and smiled.
The last I saw of our army was Voss or Huss marching loudly away, broomstick held aloft, against the burg, in the midst of a crew of some eight or ten.
As these disappeared, Herr Tschudi tapped me on the arm.
"Sirs," said he, "kiss the hand: will you have the goodness to step this way with me?"
We followed him into a room opening upon the verandah.
"Those articles yours, sirs?" said he, pointing to a chair on which lay our rope-ladder together with my jacket, waistcoat, and cap, and Langler's hat, left in the boat.