ere I am in the presence of the
gracious lieutenant-colonel, whom I was to seek at Liege. The spirus
familis (_spiritus familiaris_), whispered yesterday evening into my
master's ear, that the gracious lieutenant-colonel had come to Liege.
Zackermannthoe (_sacre mon de Dieu_), there was delight! It may be as
it will, but I have never put any faith in the cream-colour. A fine
beast, Zermannoere, but a mere childish thing, and the baronness did her
utmost--that is true! There are decent sort of people here, but the
wine is good for nothing--and when one has been in Paris--! Now, the
colonel might have marched in, like one through the Argen trumph (_Arc
de triomphe_), and I should have put the new shabrach on the white
horse; gad, how he would have pricked up his ears! But old Lizzy,--she
was my aunt, at Genthin, was always accustomed to say--I don't know,
gracious lieutenant-colonel, whether you--"

"May your tongue be lamed," said Albert, interrupting the incorrigible
babbler. "If your master is at Aix, we must make haste, for we have
still above five leagues to go."

"Stop," cried Paul Talkebarth, with all his might; "stop, stop,
gracious lieutenant-colonel, the weather is bad here; but for
fodder--those who have eyes like us, that shine in the fog."

"Paul," cried Albert, "do not wear out my patience. Where is your
master? Is he not in Aix?"

Paul Talkebarth smiled with such delight, that his whole countenance
puckered up into a thousand folds, like a wet glove, and then
stretching out his arm he pointed to the building, which might be seen
behind the wood, upon a gentle declivity, and said, "Yonder, in the
castle!" Without waiting for what Paul might have to prattle further,
Albert struck into the path that led from the high road, and hurried on
in a rapid trot. After the little that he has said, honest Paul
Talkebarth must appear to the gracious reader as an odd sort of fellow.
We have only to say, that he being an heir-loom of the family, served
Colonel Victor von S---- from the moment when the latter first put on
his officer's sword, after having been the intendent-general and
_maitre des plaisirs_ of all the sports and mad pranks of his
childhood. An old and very odd _magister_, who had been tutor to the
family through two generations, completed, with the amount of education
which he allowed to flow to honest Paul, those happy talents for
extraordinary confusion and strange _Eulenspiegelei_[1] with