“Bang—bang—bang!”
The old guardian hesitated for a moment; but then, thinking he couldn’t make matters worse, he went and opened the door; and in came the watch, and part of the crowd, and tramped all over the place.
Said the officer:
“I ne’er heard such a noise before,
Whence springs this horrible uproar?”
The drunken soldier, and the indignant guardian, and the rapid Figaro, and the pert Rosina, and even the flushed old Bertha herself, hastened to give their evidence in chorus; but, with a stern wave of the hand, the captain of the watch bade one speak at a time.
The doctor’s grey hair carried it. He deposed that the soldier was a scoundrel, a coward, and a scamp, who had sought his life and drawn his sword—and that, too, without the least provocation.
Here the barber could not help striking in, “Yes, Senor, and I came in, and I parted the sanguinary combatants.”
“Oh dear, oh dear!” This was the voice of a frightened little maiden who began to think a certain drunken soldier was in trouble.
“You are arrested,” said the captain of the watch to the drunken soldier.
Who, thereupon, thinking that the farce had been played long enough, tore open the breast of his coat and showed the Order of the Grandees of Spain.