He had other vexations too. A wine-merchant's traveler forced his way on one occasion through sand and forest into the very study of the baron. He was an audacious fellow, with a great gift of the gab, and a devoted lover of races and steeple-chases. He brought with him a whole budget of the latest sporting intelligence, and bamboozled the baron into ordering a pipe of port wine. Anton looked at the empty purse, cursed the pipe, and hurried into the audience-chamber of the baroness. It required a long feminine intrigue to effect the retraction of the order given. The baron was displeased with his carriage-horses, which were no longer young, and, besides, of a chestnut color. This last peculiarity might, indeed, have been supposed immaterial to him now, but it had been an annoyance for years, his family having always had a preference for roans; nay, was there not an old distich to the following effect: "Who rides thus through the fray alone? I ween a noble knight, The red drops fall from his gallant roan, With red is the saddle dight." This was supposed to allude to some remote ancestor, and on this account the Rothsattels (red-saddles) prized roans above all other horseflesh; but, as the color is rare in handsome horses, the baron had never had the good luck to meet with them. Now, however, Fate willed that a horse-dealer in the district should just bring round a pair. The blind man evinced a delight which much affected the ladies. He had them ridden, and driven backward and forward, carefully felt them all over, took Karl's opinion as to their merits, and revolved a plan of pleasantly surprising the baroness by their purchase. Karl ran to advertise Anton of the impending danger, and he again entered the audience-chamber, but on this occasion he met with no favorable hearing. The baroness, indeed, allowed that he was not wrong in theory, but still she implored him to let the baron have his own way. At length the new horses were in all secrecy led to their stalls, and the purchaser gave, besides the chestnuts and all the money he had in his private purse, a promise of letting the horse-dealer have, after the next harvest, two hundred bushels of oats at an unreasonably low price. Anton and Karl, in their zeal for the estate, were highly indignant at this when it first came to their knowledge months later.