Thus he went on prating, till at length he was so stupefied and exhausted that he fell asleep. The peasants, who now felt still sorelier affronted than before, had more than once cast significant looks on their cudgels. With these feelings they listened the more readily to the advice of the stranger, who had been washing himself in the meanwhile, to lift their insolent enemy, as he was fast asleep and seemed quite senseless, upon the top of one of their waggons, and to lay him, when they got to the bottom, in a corn field, that he might find himself there when he awoke from his fit. There was no difficulty in doing this, as the musicians had been paid and were gone, and the landlord was busied in the kitchen.
In the depths of the forest, where the iron forges were at work, and where in the midst of dark rocks by the side of a waterfall the shouts and the hammering of the workmen resounded far and wide in rivalry with the roar of the torrent, Edward the next evening met the inspector of the mines, to talk over some business of importance with him, and to give him some instructions from Herr Balthasar. The fire in the vast furnace glared wildly through the dusk: the brighter glow of the half-molten iron, the myriads of dazzling sparks that spurted up from the anvil beneath the sledges of the sturdy smiths, the dark forms moving through the large boarded shed, into which the trunk of a tree in full leaf had forced its way, overshadowing the bellows in the corner with its branches--this singular night piece attracted all Edward's attention, when loud talking and laughter arose among the workmen. Some one had just been telling them how Conrad, when he was drunk, had been treated by the peasants the day before, and how to his extreme annoyance he had awaked that morning in the midst of a corn field. The story seemed to interest everybody so much, that their work was suffered to stand still for a while.
"It serves him right," cried one of the broad-shouldered journeymen, "the vapouring coxcomb! He is the most insufferable and rudest miner in the whole country for miles round; and fancies he knows everything better than his neighbours, and is the cleverest fellow in the world."