In the Year '13 Part 20

"Oh, nothing," said Friedrich. "And now, good-morning, Freier. And if the Frenchman I am looking for should come by, just tell him, that I said, that you said, that your great grandmother had told you, when he said what he said, that you should say, that I had said he was not to call you an a.s.s. And now good-bye, Freier."

"What?" said Freier, following him with his eyes as he went along the village, and turning round in his hands a stone of some thirty pounds weight; "What? _He_ said, that _I_ said, that _you_ said, that _I_ should say, he should not call me an a.s.s? The cursed Prussian rascal!

That's the way he always does." And he took the stone and threw it, with all his might--amongst the rest.

Friedrich goes further. Bailiff Besserdich looks out at his doorway.

"Bailiff, have you seen a Frenchman pa.s.s by here this morning?"

"A Frenchman?" asked the bailiff. "Well, they are not so rare just now as all that; but this morning, do you say?"

"What, are _you_ going to begin asking questions now?" said Friedrich.

"I would rather tell you the story at once; it's the quickest plan." So he told him the story. "And," he concluded, "I must have him."

"That you must, Friedrich," said the bailiff. "And I will go with you; in fact it's what I'm appointed for; and our Herr Amtshauptmann said to me lately--'Besserdich,' said he, 'on you depends everything in Gulzow,' and he gave me a bundle of papers, and said, 'the matter is _pressing_.' Well, I got the summoner to read them to me, and when he had done, he said: 'The matter requires the greatest speed, bailiff.'

'No,' said I, 'I know better; the Herr Amtshauptmann told me the matter was _pressing_, and whenever he's said that to me before, I have always waited a full month first, and been ready in good time all the same!'

And so I was that time. But, Friedrich, your business is not _pressing_, it 'requires the greatest speed.' I will just fetch my hat and then we will go."

This done, they set off. As they came out on the road at the other end of the village, the bailiff said--

"Friedrich, my Hans--you know the boy; he's now in his sixteenth year, but I thought I would have him at home for a year or so longer--he's keeping the sheep here in the rye-field; for, you see, I thought to myself my fodder has run short, and at this time of year they can get a meal for themselves in the fields, so I'll turn them out here;--he has perhaps seen the fellow."

They now asked Hans. Yes, the boy had seen him; he had gone to Pinnow.

At Pinnow they pa.s.sed the schoolmaster's, and asked whether he had seen a Frenchman.

The schoolmaster's name was "Sparrow," but he was always called "Bullfinch;" some said, because he could sing so well; others, because he hopped about and poked his nose everywhere, and was always chaffing.

The Bullfinch found it easy to lead the bailiff by the nose, but Friedrich soon saw what was going on; and, when he saw that the Bullfinch made a sign to his wife to row in the same boat with him, he thought to himself--"Wait a moment, I'll make you look blue presently;"

and he got up, and said he wished to go and light his pipe at the kitchen fire.

The Bullfinch now began to overwhelm the bailiff with all sorts of stories; and when Besserdich succeeded in getting in a word, and asked whether they had not seen the Frenchman, the Bullfinch said no, and his wife also said, no.

Whilst they were going on in this way. Friedrich came in again, and said: "Something must have happened to your chimney, for the stick with the sausages has fallen down on to the ground."

The wife jumped up, ran out to the kitchen, and then came hack with the stick in her hand--"Look there now! This is the thanks we get! That shameless fellow has stolen one of our sausages."

"What fellow?" asked Friedrich.

"Why, the French fellow you were asking about."

"Oh! so he has been here then, has he?" said Friedrich.

"I should think so! And Sparrow gave him some brandy and some bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and showed him the way to Demzin!"

"Well, good-bye, then," said Friedrich. "Come along, bailiff; we know all we want now."

"Bailiff," said Friedrich, when they were some way from Pinnow and the Bullfinch, "you are a sort of man of law, and must needs know this--what is the punishment for stealing a sausage?"

"Well, Friedrich," replied the bailiff, "I don't know about sausages, but I know very well the punishment for stealing a flitch of bacon; for when the lame shoemaker took one of mine out of the smoke, the Herr Amtshauptmann gave him a fortnight in prison and a dozen on his jacket into the bargain."

"Well, that's not dangerous," said Friedrich; "and, if you reckon according to that, it would be precious little for one sausage."

"How do you make that out?"

"Well now, bailiff, tell me; when you kill seven pigs, how many flitches of bacon do you get?"

"Fourteen," said the bailiff.

"That's not true," said Friedrich; "you only get thirteen. One is taken for the sausages."

"Yes, you're right," said the bailiff.

"Well then, how many sausages does your wife make out of seven pigs?

About thirty, doesn't she? Then one flitch makes thirty sausages; and so, for one sausage, there would be, at most, half a day and half a blow; and that I consider is a righteous and merciful punishment; you may at once give me the half-blow on my back, and the half-day I will spend next Sunday afternoon in your house, in the corner behind the stove. For, look here--_I_ took the Bullfinch's sausage."

"What Devil tempted you to do that?"

"No Devil, only hunger," said Friedrich, and he drew the sausage out of his pocket, and cut off a piece. "Here Bailiff! The sausage is good, you can eat it without bread."

"No," said the Bailiff, "I'll have nothing to do with stolen goods."

"How, Stolen?" asked Friedrich. "This is merely 'forage' as we used to say under the Duke of Brunswick. And, Bailiff, surely you have climbed up into the priest's apple-tree often enough before now."

"The Devil only knows what is the matter with you this morning!" said Besserdich. "Yes, I have when I was a silly youngster; but now I have grown-up children, and must set them a good example."

"That's true," said Friedrich; "what one may do, another mayn't.--Bailiff," he added, after a while, "how old is your daughter Hanchen?"

"Well, Friedrich," said the Bailiff, and his eyes began to twinkle, "she's not old, she is only just eighteen; but I tell you, she's as sharp as a needle."

"I know that," said Friedrich; "I sat by her side yesterday evening up at the Stemhagen Schloss, and I can fully say she pleased me so well that I should be ready to change my state to please her."

"Come, come, you are going too fast," said the Bailiff, and he looked at Friedrich from top to toe.

"Yes," said Friedrich, "and I thought you might find some other farm for your Fritz; and, as you are getting old you might lay yourself on the shelf, and could give us your land; and then Hanchen and I should have a nice home, and you would have a deal of pleasure in us.

"By Heaven!" cried the Bailiff, "are you really in earnest?"

"Why not?" said Friedrich; "do I look as if I were joking?"

"What?" cried Besserdich; "An old beggar like you want to marry a Bailiff's daughter! _My_ daughter! A young girl of eighteen!"

"Mind what you're saying. Bailiff," said Fritz. "Old, say you? Just look at me, I am in my prime,--between twenty and fifty. A beggar, say you? I have never asked you for so much as a pipe of tobacco. It's true your Hanchen is, on the whole, younger than I am, but I don't object to that. I'll take her all the same, for she is clever, and knows that a fellow like me who has seen the world, is worth more than one of your young peasants with red cheeks and flaxen hair, who makes a bow like a clasp-knife and spits about in folk's rooms."

"Have you been putting these notions in the girl's head?" shouted the Bailiff, raising his stick against him.

"Put down your stick, Bailiff," said Friedrich; "what would people say if they heard that I had been fighting with my father-in-law, in the open country, before the wedding?"

The Bailiff let his stick drop.

"No, I could take a sausage from a fellow like the Bullfinch,"

Friedrich went on; "but I could not cheat a pretty, young thing like that of her happiness; I put no notions into your Hanchen's head."