"I love better to hear the clatter of spurs than the rustle of petticoats, my guest; but at my age that is wisdom," said the baron, more and more astonished to find the Marquis sharing his rustic tastes and his antipathies to the ridiculous affectations of the fair sex. "At all ages it is wisdom, baron; and I would give all the love-sick guitars, all the melancholy lays of the troubadours, for the old trumpet of a forester." "Do you know one thing, my guest?" said the baron, striking his mug against that of the Marquis. "Say on, baron," replied the Marquis, filling his pipe anew. "Well! before I saw you, knowing you were coming to interest me about your lawsuit, which unhappily . . . "Devil take the lawsuit, baron!" cried Létorière; "the one who speaks of it this evening shall be condemned to drink a pint of water!" "So be it, Marquis! Well, before I saw you it seemed to me that I should much rather go through a bramble bush than to receive you; frankly, I dreaded your arrival. . . . I believed you a dandy and a beau." . . . "Thank you, baron! Well, for my part, I believed you to be an Alcindor, a Cytherean shepherd." "Now, although I have known you but this evening," resumed the baron, "I will say to you frankly, that when you quit this poor castle of Henferester I shall have lost the best companion that a man could have for a long evening at the fire-side." "And also to pass a hard day of hunting in the depths of the forest. Devil take the coxcomb who prefers balls and gallantry to the bottle, the pipe and hunting. If you wish to prove to me that your dogs are as good as they are handsome, baron, you will see that I am worthy to follow them." "That's right, my guest! To-morrow morning, by daylight, we will be ready for the chase." "Let it be as you say, baron; we will speak of the lawsuit day after to-morrow, not before--remember--the pint of water to him who speaks of it before." "Bravo, my guest!" said the baron, "but it is late, and you are fatigued; old Selbitz will conduct you to your chamber,--that is to say, a kind of room furnished with a paltry bed, which is all I have to offer you. . . . My chamber is still worse." "Ah, well, no ceremony, baron; rather than give you any trouble, I will take one of my boots for a bolster; you will give me an armful of straw, and I shall pass a comfortable night before this fire, which will burn until morning." "I have thus passed many nights in the huts of charcoal burners," said the baron, with a sigh of regret, "when I was hunting in the Black Forest; but in fact, my friend, however bad your bed may be, you will find it more comfortable than this floor, beaten down like a threshing-ground."