"Silence, knave!" roared the Marshal. "I'll have you hanged for them! And if you contradict me again, I'll cut you in two on the spot." The police officer respectfully observed to the Field-Marshal that there must be some poetical epidemic among the watchmen, for three had been brought before him within the last quarter of an hour, accused of the same offence. "Gentlemen," said the Marshal to the officers who had accompanied him, "since the scoundrel refuses to confess, it will be necessary to take down from your remembrance the worlds of his atrocious libel. Let them be written down while you still recollect them. Come, who can say them?" The officer of police wrote to the dictation of the gentlemen who remembered the whole verses between them: "On empty head a flaunting feather, A long queue tied with tape and leather; Padded breast and waist so little, Make the soldier to a tittle; By cards and dance, and dissipation, He's sure to win a Marshal's station." "Do you deny, you rascal," cried the Field-Marshal to the terrified watchman; "do you deny that you sang these infamous lines as I was coming out of my house?" "They may sing it who like, it was not me," said the watchman. "Why did you run away, then, when you saw me?" "I did not run away." "What!" said the two officers who had accompanied the Marshal--"not run away? Were you not out of breath when at last we laid hold of you there by the market?" "Yes, but it was with fright at being so ferociously attacked. I am trembling yet in every limb."