"Well, then, his Friedrich has. He's a Prussian. Do you know what a Prussian is? Do you know what the meaning of Prussian is? Do you know...? Blockhead! What are you staring at me for? Do you think I'm going to tell you all my secrets? But what I was going to say is--they'll send the old Amtshauptmann to Bayonne in France, where they also sent Graf Ivenacker's white horse, Herodotus; and Mamsell Westphalen--as far as I know the French laws--will simply be strung up, and you, my lad, will get a good flogging for coming down here." Fritz Sahlmann now saw a sad prospect before him, and made a wry face accordingly.-- "But, Herr Rathsherr, not in a public place?" he asked. "Wherever they can catch you. Though, if the matter is taken up in the proper quarters, everything may still be made right.--Can you be silent?" Fritz Sahlmann replied that he could be most modestly silent. "Well, then, come here, and put both your hands in your trowsers' pockets, and whistle. That's it. And now look quite unconcerned as you do in summer time when you are knocking down the apples from the tree in the Schlossgarden, and you see Mamsell Westphalen coming. Yes that's right. And now, observe every word that I say; go with this face and with this look of child-like innocence through the French and peasants up to the Schloss into the kitchen, and take Mamsell Westphalen aside into a corner and then say to her just these words--'_help is near_.' If she is not satisfied with this you can break to her gently what I have told you about hanging, and, if she's at all frightened at that, say she is to keep up her heart, for I, Rathsherr Herse, have taken the matter in hand. But first of all, she must at once shut and bolt the kitchen-door and the back-door leading to the garden, and she and the two maids and you must each arm yourselves with weapons, and on no account let any Frenchman in, and you must defend yourselves to the last man till I come. I will go at once and will come through the Schlossgarden to the back-door--I'll only get my cloak first for it's raining desperately, and my pass-word will be '_All's well_' and my war-cry 'York.' But no! She won't understand that. What do you say? It's all the same--it's all the same. Well, my war-cry will be 'Pickled pork.' She'll understand that. So when some one comes, and calls it out, she is to open the back-door. Have you understood it all?" "Yes, Herr Rathsherr." "Well, then, now be off; and don't let anyone,--not even the Herr Amtshauptmann--know a word about it." Fritz went, and the Rathsherr too.