"Your's, Brandt."--"I foresee but one little accident, my Lord, that can disturb our present felicity."--"What's that?"--"O nothing, a mere trifle.--I was thinking that the good Jews of Franckfort may, if they please, turn the Baron of Felsheim out of his own castle."--"Faith! I had forgot those scoundrels," answered the Baron, drinking a bumper; "however, you shall go to Franckfort to-morrow morning, collect the rabble together, and bring them here. I will receive them in that famous tower, where Witikind, with only thirty Saxons, stopped, for three days, an army of one hundred thousand men, led by Charlemagne in person. The place will inspire them with that veneration for my person which its shattered state no longer enforces."--"I will go, Colonel."--"If they are reasonable--we will pay them."--"If they are not--we must sabre them."--"That is well said, Brandt,--bravo!"--"Let us drink, Colonel."--"With all my heart." The next morning, at break of day, Brandt saddled his horse, gallopped towards Franckfort, assembled the Israelites, imparted to them the good intentions of his master, appointed a day the Colonel would be ready to receive them, and then returned to the castle. The punctuality of a good soldier to be at his post in the hour of battle, of a lover in keeping the first appointment of his mistress, or of a courtier at the levee, is not to be compared with the precision of a Jew, who has money to receive. Those of Franckfort arrived on the appointed day, at the appointed hour, and long before the Baron had slept himself sober. Brandt went to inform him of the arrival of his creditors, assisted him in putting on a dressing-gown of blue velvet lined with green stuff, which descended from Ferdinand XIII. and which Ferdinand XIV. had never worn but to give his public audiences; tied his sabre over the said gown, placed his double-barrelled pistols in his belt, combed his whiskers, and put a white cap over that of dirty brown, which he commonly wore. The Baron, thus accoutred, came forth from his bed-chamber, leaning on his Squire's shoulder; walked majestically through two rows, formed by his creditors, and was followed by them to the tower of Witikind. After depositing, on a worm-eaten table, his naked sword and his pistols, the Baron seated himself in an immense arm-chair, stroked his whiskers, and spoke in the following terms:--