al 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 Eulenboeck 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.

On a sudden the company received an addition as unexpected as it was
disagreeable. The neighbourhood had been disturbed, and the watch,
which had likewise heard the prodigious uproar, now entered, with an
officer at its head, having found the house-door open. They inquired
the cause of the din, and the meaning of the cry of fire. Edward, who
had kept himself tolerably sober, endeavoured to explain every thing to
them, in order to excuse his friends. But these excited and incapable
now of a rational thought, treated this visit as a violent encroachment
upon their most unalienable rights; every one cried out against the
officer