whose duties were those of a police sergeant and night watchman--from being out on patrol, accompanied by several trusty men, on the lookout, not for robbers and thieves, but for students. It seems that the frequenters of the Innsbruck University gave great and constant trouble to this most important of town functionaries. By all that we hear of their mad excesses and their riotous conduct, we can conclude that "Gown _versus_ Town" was a constant war-cry in those dark days of Innsbruck. The "riotmaster"--evidently a most conscientious personage, judging from his conduct on that auspicious night--was of course constantly the object of the students' spite and revenge. To quote the words of this much-exposed individual, we find "that he completed his first round that night by ten o'clock. He had met some students, but they did not commence any riot or fight. At twelve o'clock, while on his second round, he was approaching the meat-booths"--a row of stalls of which some time previously the students had made a clean sweep--"when by the light of his lantern he and his men perceived some persons standing about. As the thought struck him that these might be students, he firmly advanced with the intention of catching the evil-doers and giving them a sound thrashing." On getting quite close to the booths he and his men heard a "subtile woman's voice." At this moment three figures issued from the gloom, while a fourth followed them at a little distance, and passing by him they turned the corner of the street leading to the Inn bridge. Our confidence in the courage of the riotmaster is rudely shaken by his next remark: "I called out Good-night! but they did not answer me; and after vainly searching behind the booths for the female whose voice we had heard, but whom we did not perceive among the four persons that left, we proceeded with due caution to follow these suspicious personages." When they reached the bridge, the butcher's man, leading three oxen and carrying a lantern, met them, and him the riotmaster asked if he had not seen four students on the bridge. Upon receiving a negative reply, the whole matter seemed more suspicious than ever, and he was just ordering his men to search below the bridge, where the students might have secreted themselves, when the butcher himself came up and told him he had met four persons on the other side of the bridge. "Thereupon," says the report, "we returned to our quarters, confident that they were only French people"--meaning outlandish or foreign folk.