183--."

Heavy steps now came sounding along the passages, and two men made
their boisterous entrance.

I immediately recognised the respectable pair of the watch-tower by the
bridge. The farm-servants may have told them that there was a stranger
in the house, and they had shaken themselves out of their drunken sleep,
and come to assert their rights as guardians and watchmen. The
castellan, Monsieur Pierre, blinking on me with his small yellow much
inflamed eyes, measured me from head to foot, with a very comical
combination of sleepiness and impudence. He stammered out a few words
in a hoarse coarse voice, in very indifferent French, but he was soon
talked down by his companion, who walked straight up to me, and in the
most brutal tone of official zeal, enquired who I was, and what I
wanted?

I drily answered, that I was a friend of Count Ernest's, and had come
to see the castle. Upon which straightway a change came over the spirit
of the pair. The castellan commenced a series of crouching cat-like
obeisances, while the forester contrived to hit on the happiest
transition from the most insolent aggressiveness to the respectful
bluntness of the honest woodman. I perceived that I was taken for a far
more important personage than I was--for an emissary--(no less!)--from
the family, come to hold an impromptu inspection of the castle and its
condition. The forester, officiously relieving me from the candlestick,
forced me into a seat again, and sent a man to the cellar, for a bottle
of the best and oldest; while, with a sly kick, or a smothered
imprecation, he made an occasional attempt to awaken his drowsy
colleague to the full gravity of the situation. However I did not care
to be initiated into the details of the administration of woods and
buildings, and I felt so much disgusted with the voluble servility of
this precious pair of rogues, that I broke off suddenly, as soon as the
old lady returned to the hall, and excusing myself with the natural
fatigue of a pedestrian, I begged her to light me to my room.

She cast a look of meaning on the two, who were hardly to be prevented
from following us upstairs.

"Did you see the face Monsieur Pierre made at me, sir? and how the
forester took up his knife? Of course they are afraid that I should
tell of them. Good Lord! as if one could not see with half an eye the
state the place is in! I did once write about it to Sweden; but Sweden
is a long way off; too long, it would