ng is not my mode. I will drive the rowels of the spur into
their flesh, and give the scourge a trial. Under my rule it shall be
brought to pass that potatoes and small-beer shall be considered a
holiday treat; and woe to him who meets my eye with the audacious front
of health. Haggard want and crouching fear are my insignia; and in this
livery I will clothe ye.
[Exit.]

SCENE III.--THE BOHEMIAN WOODS.

SPIEGELBERG, RAZMAN, A Troop Of ROBBERS.

RAZ. Are you come? Is it really you? Oh, let me squeeze thee into a
jelly, my dear heart's brother! Welcome to the Bohemian forests! Why,
you are grown quite stout and jolly! You have brought us recruits in
right earnest, a little army of them; you are the very prince of crimps.

SPIEGEL. Eh, brother? Eli? And proper fellows they are! You must
confess the blessing of heaven is visibly upon me; I was a poor, hungry
wretch, and had nothing but this staff when I went over the Jordan, and
now there are eight-and-seventy of us, mostly ruined shopkeepers,
rejected masters of arts, and law-clerks from the Swabian provinces.
They are a rare set of fellows, brother, capital fellows, I promise you;
they will steal you the very buttons off each other's trousers in
perfect security, although in the teeth of a loaded musket,* and they
live in clover and enjoy a reputation for forty miles round, which is
quite astonishing.

*[The acting edition reads, "Hang your hat up in the sun, and I'll
take you a wager it's gone the next minute, as clean out of sight
as if the devil himself had walked off with it."]

There is not a newspaper in which you will not find some little feat or
other of that cunning fellow, Spiegelberg; I take in the papers for
nothing else; they have described me from head to foot; you would think
you saw me; they have not forgotten even my coat-buttons. But we lead
them gloriously by the nose. The other day I went to the
printing-office and pretended that I had seen the famous Spiegelberg,
dictated to a penny-a-liner who was sitting there the exact image of a
quack doctor in the town; the matter gets wind, the fellow is arrested,
put to the rack, and in his anguish and stupidity he confesses the devil
take me if he does not--confesses that he is Spiegelberg. Fire and fury!
I was on the point of giving myself up to a magistrate rather than have
my fair fame marred by such a poltroon; however, within three mont