Loud laughter had accompanied this narrative. The librarian now impetuously demanded Champagne, and the bookseller bawled for punch. Eulenböck, however, cried out, "Oh! ye vulgar souls! After this heavenly ladder which I have made you climb, to take a look into paradise, can so ignoble, mannered, modern and witless a spirit as this punch, as it is called, enter even into the remotest corner of your memory? This wretched brewage of hot water, bad brandy, and lemon acid? And what have we to do in our circle with this diplomatic, sober potation, this Champagne? A liquor that does not expand the heart and the intellect, and, after a half debauch, can but serve, at the utmost, to sober one again? Oh! ye profane ones!" He thumped the table; and the rest, with the exception of Edward, answered this gesture so violently, that with the concussion the bottles danced, and several glasses fell in shivers on the floor. Hereupon the laughter and tumult became still louder; a start was made to fetch fresh glasses, and Dietrich cried, "It is grown cold here, cold as ice, and that the punch would remedy." It was late in the night, the servants had retired, they did not know how to heat the stove again; Edward confessed, too, that his stock of wood was quite at an end, and that he had ordered a fresh one to come in early the next morning. "What think you?" cried Dietrich, quite intoxicated, "our host, we know, has resolved to fit up this room in quite a new style. Suppose we were to break away this useless wainscoting, these boards that cover the windows, and to light a glorious German fire in the great old-fashioned chimney?" This mad proposition immediately gained a hearing and loud assent from the guests now grown wild, and Edward, who had been the whole evening in a sort of stupefaction, made no opposition. The screen of the fire-place was removed, and then a party ran with lights to the kitchen, to fetch hatchets, bars and other implements. In the anteroom Eulenböck found an old damaged hunting horn, and as he winded it, they marched like soldiers, with bellowing and detestable music, back into the saloon. The table which stood in the way was upset, and immediately there began a hewing, breaking and hammering against the hollow wainscot. Every one strove to surpass the other in diligence, and, to animate the labourers, the painter again blew a charge on the horn, and in the midst of the racket all cried as if they were possessed, "Wood, wood! Fire, fire!" so that this bellowing, the music, the strokes of the hatchets, the cracking of the boards as they broke and burst, threw the host into such a state of dizziness, that he retired in silence into a corner of the room.