The Wallach raised his round eyebrows, which looked, for all the world, like a charcoal smear extending from his nostrils to his temples, and which also served him as a kind of propeller for shoving backwards and forwards the lamb's-wool cap that he wore half over his face, looked at the poet with wide-open eyes, and asked him—
"Are you he whom they pay to tell lies?"
The Wallach meant no offence by this terminology. It was only his roundabout way of describing Clement the Clerk's sphere of activity.
The poet was almost choking with rage.
"And whose ox are you?" he exclaimed furiously.
"The ox of his Excellency who sent this letter," he answered with perfect simplicity.
"What is your master's name?" cried Clement, angrily snatching the letter out of the Wallach's hand.
"They call him Excellency."
Clement tore open the letter and read as follows—"I want a word or two with you; follow the bearer whithersoever he leads you."
Clement was wroth enough already, but the reflection that he was summoned away on important business, and had no boots to go in, was the last straw. He was quite beside himself.