“Be not disconcerted, my little custard-monger; if thou art honest, thou shalt prosper. Did I not say that the profits of this night were for the most poor and the most honest? If thy stock in trade were in thy basket, my raspberry-puff, verily thou art not now the richest here; and so, therefore, if thy character be a fair one, that is to say, if thou only cheat five times a day, and give a tenth of thy cheatery to the poor, thou shalt have the benefit. I ask thee again, what is truth? If I sup with the baker, and he tells me to do what I like with all that is his, and I kiss his wife, he will kick me out; yet to kiss his wife might be my pleasure, if her breath were sweet. I ask thee again, what is truth? Truth, they say, lies in a well; but perhaps this is a lie. How do we know that truth is not in one of these two boxes?” asked the conjuror, placing his cap on his head, and holding one small snuff-box to a tall, savage-looking, one-eyed Bohemian, who, with a comrade, had walked over from the Austrian garrison at Mentz. “I see but one box,” growled the soldier. “It is because thou hast only one eye, friend; open the other, and thou shalt see two,” said the conjuror, in a slow, malicious tone, with his neck extended, and his hand with the hateful box outstretched in it. “Now, by our black Lady of Altoting, I’ll soon stop thy prate, chitterling!” bellowed the enraged Bohemian. “Murder! the protection of the free city against the Emperor of Austria, the King of Bohemia, Hungary, and Lombardy!” and the knave retreated to the very extremity of the stage, and affecting agitating fear, hid himself behind the green curtain, from a side of which his head was alone visible, or rather an immense red tongue, which wagged in all shapes at the unlucky soldier, except when it retired to the interior of his mouth, to enable him to reiterate “Murder!” and invoke the privileges of the free city of Frankfort.