fore the squire, who, as our
renders may remember, had formerly been a non-commissioned officer. He
now ordered Florian to "take the hair off his mouth," because he had
never been a soldier, and none but soldiers were allowed to wear
mustaches. Florian laughed at the squire, who took it in dudgeon;
Florian answered his vituperations, and was marched off to prison.

It is a dangerous thing to arrest a man who is innocent of crime: it
palls his feeling and his sense of moral responsibility for those
occasions in which these qualities are particularly tried.

When Florian came out he was compelled to obey the cruel behest. With
an indescribable mixture of wrath and humiliation he stood before the
looking-glass, compressing his naked lips and gnashing his teeth. A
dreadful vow was formed in his heart. Nothing was talked of in the
village but the loss of Florian's mustache; and, now that it was gone,
all united in singing its praises. Florian felt as if his skin had been
peeled off. Of course, when he appeared in the street, every passer-by
regaled him with an expression of condolence. But ambition had already
perverted him to such an extent that he fairly enjoyed even this sort
of notoriety. To be thought about was the first thing; _what_ people
thought of him was only the second. He was never seen near the tailor's
house in the daytime; and when he met Crescence in the evening, and she
laughed at him, he swore to make the geometer pay him for every hair.
She tried to pacify him; and he was silent.

Very soon after, the geometer, in returning home from Horb one evening,
was waylaid by three men, who dragged him into the woods, and, with the
cry of "Wale him! he's from Ulm!" beat him so unmercifully that he
could scarcely walk home. One of them cried after him, as he went away,
"This was out of kindness; but if you show your face in the village a
week after this we'll try the other persuasion." The geometer thought
he recognised Florian's voice. He tried to institute a prosecution; but
the polities of the village were then in such a state of agitation that
no business of public import was properly attended to.

The shaving of Florian was the last official act of the noncommissioned
squire. The election came on, and Buchmaier received almost every vote.
Under his administration people were free from paltry vexations, and
Florian's mustache regained its pristine beauty.

In spite of the exertions of the Red Tailor and mine