At that moment a horseman leaped across the same ditch and alighted on the road. It was the steward, Wrampe, who had witnessed the scene from a distance and came galloping up at full speed. "Now I come," said the slater, as he fell from the roof; "what on earth does that mean? Why do you drive through the ditch, if you have a bridge within ten yards? and to ill-treat brown Lizzie! I will pay you for your laziness, you--" and here followed a curse of two minutes' length. To deliver this energetic speech, to jump down from his horse, to spit in his hands in order the better to take hold of the heavy riding-whip, and to begin belaboring the broad back of the servant according to rule--all this was the work of a moment for the impetuous steward. "I will not be beaten, sir," remonstrated the man. "You won't be beaten, you rascal," replied the other, never stopping for a moment; "I dare say not, but you'll get your beating notwithstanding." Oswald, who suffered witnessing the scene, although he knew well how fully the man had deserved his punishment, begged Mr. Wrampe to let him go now. The latter gratified his wrath by a few last blows of great energy, and then said, as if concluding a quiet argument: "Well, now come along, John, we'll get the wagon right again." Then he put his broad shoulders to the wagon and got it into the road as if it had been a child's carriage; the horses, who had had time to recover, pulled heartily, and the servant could go on his way. "Drive slowly home, you hear, and don't forget what I have told you," the steward cried after him. "But you have told him nothing; you have only beaten him," said Oswald, smiling. "And do you think these people understand any other kind of talking?" "Have you ever tried it?" Mr. Wrampe seemed to be slightly embarrassed by this question. He said, in reply: "That has made me warm." Then he pulled a brandy-flask, which held at least a quart, from his pocket, put his thumb against the place down to which he meant to empty it, drank, held the bottle against the light, and then, as he seemed to think that he had not done the whole of his duty, he took another good pull. After that he mounted his horse, which had stood quietly by him as if accustomed to such scenes, wished them a good evening, leaped once more across the ditch, and rode off at full gallop. With Bruno everything turned into a passion. The glow of his imagination changed the fictions of poetry into men of flesh and blood. The death of Hector drew tears of sympathy and indignation from his eyes, and the moral disgust which he felt, when he witnessed an act of injustice or of cruelty, was so intense that it caused him a physical indisposition.