nsign.

"At last the councillors came.

"When I saw these men creeping out of the little gate, I thought, 'What
the devil! are these councillors? they are a fine lot!' The councillors
looked a little respectable, but the burghermaster was up to the knees
in cow-dung, and must have been fetched from clearing away the dung in
the stable. Hereupon, Major von Benkendorf asked whether they were the
councillors? They answered: 'Yes, and what did we desire?' The Major
asked whether this was not the highroad to Nuremberg? They said, 'Yes.'
'Why then were the gates closed and barricaded, and we not allowed to
pass through?' Then the president of the council answered: 'They were
commanded by their government not to let any troops pass through,
therefore they must keep the gates closed; they must do what their
master commanded them.' But Major von Benkendorf repeated his former
words, and said to them: 'They must open to us, and that quickly, for
that we must march further; and if they did not open, we would do it
ourselves.' The president of the council answered this, and said: 'We
might do as we liked, but he could not open the gates to us.' But the
dung-bespattered burghermaster then began: 'Nay! if you wish to march
further, you can do so by the back road.' I thought to myself, 'If thou
couldst but kill that cursed dirty fellow!' The Major then forthwith
called to me, and desired that all the carpenters of the whole division
should be summoned; which was done in a moment. Hereupon he asked once
more whether they would amicably open the gate? if not, he would have
them immediately hewn open. They might now see that we ourselves would
open the gates if they did not prefer preserving them whole.

"The Major thought they would resolve to open them, but they said they
would not, and we might do what we liked. Hereupon the Major called
out: 'Proceed carpenters! hew the gates down!' Thereupon the carpenters
set to work. When the knocking and cracking began, it was well worth
seeing how the councillors, among whom was the Burghermaster, and the
frightened barber-Lieutenant, began to ran, as if carried off by the
devil. In a moment both gates were hewn down, and the whole detachment
marched with trumpets, drums, and fifes, into the city.

"As we marched in through the gates, the good barber-Lieutenant, and
the shoemaker-Ensign, with their men, presented arms, and saluted both
the officers of our detachment.

"Here we stopped, just