"Yes--and quickly too. His highness has twelve horses: he must have room." I was going to answer, but the officer began to swear and storm so loudly, without listening to anything I could plead, shouting at me that every one of my beasts would be driven to be slaughtered immediately if I made any difficulty, that without saying another word, I drove them all out, my heart swelling, and my head bowed with despair. Gredel, watching from her window, saw this, and coming down, red with anger, said to the officer: "You must be a great coward to behave so roughly to an old man who cannot defend himself." My hair stood on end with horror; but the officer vouchsafed not a word, and went off instantly. Then the chaplain whispered in my ear: "You are going to have the honor of entertaining Monseigneur, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and you must call him 'Your highness.'" I thought with myself: "You, and your highness, and all the highnesses in the world, I wish you were all of you five hundred thousand feet in the bowels of the earth. You are a bad lot. You came into the world for the misery of mankind. Thieves! rogues!" I only thought these things: I would not have said them for the world. Several persons had been shot in our mountains the last two days--fathers of families--and the remembrance of these things makes one prudent. As I was reflecting upon our misfortunes, his highness arrived, with his aides-de-camp and his servants. They alighted, entered the house, hung up their wet clothes against the wall, and filled the kitchen. My wife ran upstairs, I stood in a corner behind the stove: we had nothing left to call our own. This Duke of Saxe was so tall that he could scarcely walk upright under my roof. He was a handsome man, covered with gold-lace ornaments; and so were the two great villains who followed him--Colonel Egloffstein and Major Baron d'Engel. Yes, I could find no fault with them on account of their height or their appetites; nor did they seem to mind us in the least. They laughed, they chatted, they swung themselves round in my room, jingling their swords on the stone floor, on the stairs, everywhere, without paying the smallest attention to me--I seemed to be in _their_ house. From their arrival until their departure, the fire never once went out in my kitchen; my wood blazed; my pans and kettles, my roasting-jack, went on with their business; they twisted the necks of my fowls, my ducks, my geese, plucked them, and roasted them: they fetched splendid pieces of beef, which they minced to make rissoles, and sliced to make what they called "biftecks"; then they opened my drawers and cupboards, spread my tablecloths on my table, rinsed out my glasses and my bottles, and fetched my wine out of my cellar.