The Jäger shrugged his shoulders. "She took the kisses as well," he said cynically. "What would his lordship have? Women are like that!"
The other flung the coins across the table with an oath. Those were better days, of old, when a man could have his bidding done in his own castle without any such bargainings. But, as the servant wheeled and swung towards the door, his master recalled him.
"You have left my orders in the village? If that fiddling beggar dares present himself near my doors again, I shall have him flogged till the skin hangs in strips, and then ... and then set the dogs upon him. The miserable rapscallion; the impudent cur, to dare to play his tricks as high as my very table, to dare to break bread with my wife!"
The Burgrave struck the table so that the rummer of Burgundy at his elbow splashed red upon his hand; the Jäger glanced at the empty bottle and then at his lord’s inflamed countenance, and gave his soldierly response:
"_Zu Befehl._" Then he added, the insolence of the servant who feels superior to his employer in coolness and clear-headedness piercing through his well-drilled air of subordination: "May it please your Excellency, the folk about here believe the fiddler to be some great person in disguise."
The Burgrave’s eyes were bloodshot this evening; the Jäger was minded of the glare of an old boar at bay.
"It is quite likely," he proceeded jauntily, "that the gentleman was similarly deceived."
"The gentleman—the gentleman? What gentleman, you rascal?"
"The gracious young gentleman, the cousin of her Excellency."
With some additional briskness of gait, Kurtz drew the solid oak door between himself and the Chancellor.
Alone, Betty’s husband yielded himself to a convulsion of rage. Again he beat the table with his hands, anon tore at his bristling hair; suffocating, he wrenched the stock from his throat; broken words, curses, threats, ejaculations of self-pity escaped him. When at length he recovered his senses in some fashion, he was shaking as if from an ague. He caught up the last glassful of wine and drained it at a draught. Then he subsided heavily into his chair, and drawing unmeaning signs with his fingers through the spilt wine upon the polished oak, began slowly to repeat, half aloud, the words of the letter Kurtz had brought him.