the old man, and permitting him to press it to his lips. "I know your
good, faithful heart, which has never swerved from its duty these twenty
years that you have been in my service. Go now, old man, and do as I have
bidden you. But hear! No one need know that I have paid you and Jocelyn
your month's wages, for then they would all come to be paid by me; and the
paymaster was quite right--our coffers are empty, and we must take account
of everything until they are filled again. Keep silent, then, both of you.
I shall tell the paymaster myself that I have just meddled a little in his
affairs.

"But now, hear one thing more, Conrad. Go straightway across into Broad
Street, to the house of his excellency the Stadtholder in the Mark, Count
von Schwarzenberg. We request his excellency to take the trouble to come
immediately to us. Say from me that we have weighty business to transact
with him that admits of no delay. Therefore, we entreat his excellency to
come hither forthwith."

"Pardon, your highness," said Conrad, anxiously and confusedly; "my
dresscoat is still at the court tailor's. Must I go across in my jacket?
At the Stadtholder's everything is so fearfully fine and stately. The
lackeys, too, put on such airs that an electoral lackey can not stand up
to them at all; they are, besides, haughty, supercilious fellows, who
think themselves very grand, and fancy they are something quite uncommon,
and almost more than one of us, who are court lackeys to your highness.
Would it not make the fellows rejoice to see me in this jacket and--"

"Never mind; go across in your jacket," said the Elector, laughing.
"Remember always that you are the servant of the master, and those spruce
fellows but the lackeys of the servant, although I must say that the
servant is a much richer, more magnificent man than his master. Run and