Then the three functionaries looked at each other and laughed softly, and the burgomaster, leaning over the opening again, cried rudely:
"Be quick about it, you varlet, or I'll shoot! Be quick about it!"
He cocked his gun, and the click seemed to hasten the ascent of the mysterious person; they heard him rolling down some stones. Nevertheless it still took him another minute before he appeared, the cistern being at a depth of sixty feet.
What was this man doing in such deep darkness? He must be some great criminal! So at least thought Petrus Mauerer and his acolytes.
At last a vague form could be discerned in the dark, then slowly, by degrees, a little man, four and a half feet high at the most, frail, ragged, his face withered and yellow, his eye gleaming like a magpie's, and his hair tangled, came out shouting:
"By what right do you come to disturb my studies, wretched creatures?"
This grandiose apostrophe was scarcely in accord with his costume and physiognomy. Accordingly the burgomaster indignantly replied:
"Try to show that you're honest, you knave, or I'll begin by administering a correction."
"A correction!" said the little man, leaping with anger, and drawing himself up under the nose of the burgomaster.
"Yes," replied the other, who, nevertheless, did not fail to admire the pygmy's courage; "if you do not answer the questions satisfactorily I am going to put to you. I am the burgomaster of Hirschwiller; here are the rural guard, the shepherd and his dog. We are stronger than you—be wise and tell me peaceably who you are, what you are doing here, and why you do not dare to appear in broad daylight. Then we shall see what's to be done with you."