The story opens at the moment when the German people was at length beginning to rise against Napoleon, and it gives a vivid picture of the state of feeling which then prevailed in Germany towards the French. The Germans were in the galling position of being forced to treat the French as allies, whilst hating them with an intense and unconquerable hatred. And this hatred, wide-spread over the whole country, is shown in the expressions of detestation ever bursting forth at the mention of the French name. The language in which the story is written is closely allied to the Saxon, and has much more resemblance to English than High German has; but it is nevertheless a dialect, and bears the same relation to the High German as the child's language does to the man's; and my aim has been, while endeavouring to make the translation read like an English work, to adhere as closely as possible to the form and simplicity of the original. Hampstead, _June_ 1867. IN THE YEAR '13. CHAPTER I. Showing why Miller Voss could not be made a bankrupt, and how he helped the Amtshauptmann in a great difficulty. I was baptised, and had godfathers: four of them. And, if my godfathers were still alive, and walked through the streets with me, people would stop and say: "Look, what fine fellows! you won't see many such." They were indeed godfathers! And one of them was a head taller than the others, and towered above them as Saul did above his brethren. This was the old Amtshauptmann Weber. He used to wear a well-brushed blue coat, yellowish trousers, and well-blacked boots, and his face was so marked by the small-pox that it looked as if the Devil had been threshing his peas on it, or as if he had sat down upon his face on a cane-bottomed chair. On his broad forehead there stood written, and in his eyes too you could read, "Not the fear of Man but the fear of God." And he was the right man in the right place. About eleven o'clock in the morning he might be seen sitting in an arm-chair in the middle of the room, whilst his wife fastened a napkin under his chin, put the powder on his hair, tied it behind and twisted it into a neat pigtail. When the old gentleman walked up and down under the shade of the chestnut-trees at noon, his little rogue of a pigtail wagged merrily, and nodded over the collar of his blue coat as if it wanted to say to any one who would listen: "Yes, look old fellow! What do you think of me? I am only the tip of his hair, and if I can wag so comically out here, you may fancy how merry it must be inside his head." When I took him a message from my father, and managed to give it straight off, he would pat me on the head, and then say: "Now, away with you, boy. Off, like a shot! When you pull the trigger the gun mustn't hang fire, but must go off like a flash of lightning. Run to Mamsell Westphalen, and ask her for an apple."