"But our business, dear count—"
"Shall wait, please God, until to-morrow; for this is the time when man and beast repose."
"And truly, count, we are like—as you take things—to be numbered with the last. Fie, Count St. Aldenheim! are you the man that would have us suffer those things tamely which the Landgrave has begun?"
"And what now hath his serenity been doing? Doth he meditate to abolish Burgundy? If so, my faith! but we are, as you observe, little above the brutes. Or, peradventure, will he forbid laughing,—his highness being little that way given himself?"
"Count St. Aldenheim! it pleases you to jest. But we are assured that you know as well as we, and relish no better, the insults which the Landgrave is heaping upon us all. For example, the sentinel at your own door—doubtless you marked him? How liked you him?—"
"Methought he looked cold and blue. So I sent him a goblet of
Johannisberg."
"You did? and the little court of guard—you have seen that? and
Colonel von Aremberg, how think you of him?"
"Why surely now he's a handsome man: pity he wears so fiery a scarf!
Shall we drink his health, gentlemen?"
"Health to the great fiend first!"
"As you please, gentlemen: it is for you to regulate the precedency.
But at least,