I was at last, however, obliged to tell my wife the whole matter. At first she was near fainting; but she soon recovered, and said to me: "Well, if Gredel won't have young Mathias, we shall keep our hundred louis, and we shall have no need to hire a new servant. I should prefer that, for one cannot trust strange servants in a house." "Yes; but how can we declare to Mathias Heitz that Gredel refuses his son?" "Oh, don't trouble yourself, Christian," said she; "leave me alone, and don't let us quarrel with Cousin George: that's the principal thing. I will say that Gredel is too young to be married; that is the proper thing to say, and nobody can answer that." Catherine quieted me in this way. But this business was still racking my brain, when extraordinary things came to pass, which we were far from expecting, and which were to turn our hair gray, and that of many others with us. CHAPTER III One morning the secretary of the sous-prefet wrote to me to come to Sarrebourg. From time to time we used to receive orders, as magistrates, to go and give an account at the sous-prefecture of what was going on in our district. I said to myself, immediately on receiving this letter from Secretary Gerard, that it was something about our Agricultural Society, which had not yet delivered the prizes gained by the ducks and the geese a few weeks before. It was true that the Paris newspapers had for three days past been discussing a Prince of Hohenzollern, who had just been named King of Spain; but what could that signify to us at Rothalp, Illingen, Droulingen, and Henridorf, whether the King of Spain was called Hohenzollern or by any other name? In my opinion, it could not be about that affair that Monsieur le Sous-prefet wanted to talk to us, but about the old or a new Agricultural Society, or something at least which concerned us in particular. The idea of the parish road and the bells came also into my mind; perhaps that was the object we were sent for. At last I took up my staff and started for Sarrebourg. Arriving there, I found the whole length of the principal street crowded with mayors, police-inspectors, and _juges-de-paix_.* Mother Adler's inn and all the little public-houses were so full that they could not have held another customer. * Magistrates. Then I said to myself, no doubt something quite new is in the wind: as, for instance; a fete like that when her Majesty the Empress and the Prince Imperial, three years before, passed through Nancy to celebrate the union of Lorraine with France. Thereupon I went to the sous-prefecture, where I found already several mayors of the neighborhood talking at the door. They were discussing the price of corn, the high price of cattle food; they were called in one after another. In half an hour my turn came; Monsieur Christian Weber's name was called, and I entered with my hat in my hand.