Returning half-dressed, with an air of baffled hospitality: 'Herr
Rittmeister, our Schloss must not be disgraced; here are your brave
fellows waiting, and nothing of refreshment ready for them. I have given
order at the Tavern in the Village; send them down; there they shall
drink better luck to me, and have a bit of bread and cheese.' Stupid
Rabenau again consents:--and in few minutes more, Warkotsch is in the
Woods, galloping like Epsom, towards Wallis; and Rabenau can only arrest
Madam (who knows nothing), and return in a baffled state.

"Schmidt too got away. The party sent after Schmidt found him in the
little Town of Nimptsch, half-way home again from his Wallis errand;
comfortably dining with some innocent hospitable people there. Schmidt
could not conceal his confusion; but pleading piteously a necessity of
nature, was with difficulty admitted to the--to the ABTRITT so called;
and there, by some long pole or rake-handle, vanished wholly through a
never-imagined aperture, and was no more heard of in the upper world.
The Prussian soldiery does not seem expert in thief-taking.

"Warkotsch came back about midnight that same Tuesday, 500 Wallis
Hussars escorting him; and took away his ready moneys, near 5,000
pounds in gold, reports Frau Kappel, who witnessed the ghastly operation
(Hussars in great terror, in haste, and unconscionably greedy as to
sharing);--after which our next news of him, the last of any clear
authenticity, is this Note to his poor Wife, which was read in the Law
Procedures on him six months hence: 'My Child (MEIN KIND),--The accursed
thought I took up against my King has overwhelmed me in boundless
misery. From the top of the highest hill I cannot see the limits of it.
Farewell; I am in the farthest border of Turkey.--WARKOTSCH.'" [Kuster,
_Lebens-Rettungen,_ p. 88: Kuster, pp. 65-188 (for the general
Narrative); Tempelhof, v. 346, &c. &c.]

Schmidt and he, after patient trial, were both of them beheaded and
quartered,--in pasteboard effigy,--in the Salt Ring (Great Square) of
Breslau, May, 1762:--in pasteboard, Friedrich liked it better than the
other way. "MEINETWEGEN," wrote he, sanctioning the execution,
"For aught I care; the Portraits will likely be as worthless as the
Originals." Rittmeister Rabenau had got off with a few days' arrest,
and the remark, "ER IST EIN DUMMER TEUFEL (You are a stupid devil)!"
Warkotsch's Estates, all and sundry, deducting the Baroness's jointure,
which was p