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"Oh, but that was a great night at the inn. Gretchen was so happy that she spilled the beer down the apothecary's back and the landlady could talk of nothing but Fiddles's release. But the real fun began an hour later, when shouts for the Herr Mahler, interwoven with the music of a concertina, made me step to the door.
"The next morning, before I was dressed, in fact, a row downstairs brought me into the hall outside my door, where I stood listening over the banister. Then came the tramp of men, and three gendarmes mounted the steps and halted at Fiddles's door. "Bang! bang! went the hilt of a short-sword on the panel. 'Open, in the name of the law. "'What for? I demanded.
The cobbler in the village, who sat all day long pegging at his shoes, and who, it seemed, was watch-goose for the whole village and knew the movements of every inhabitant, man, woman, and child, and who for some reason hated Fiddles, on being interviewed by the gendarme, had stated positively that the Mayor had not passed his corner with his gun and four dogs on the day of Fiddles's arrest.
"There was a fair of some sort in the village, and I got an old frame for half a mark in a pawnshop, borrowed a coat from Fritz, the stableman, squeezed Fiddles into it, stuck a student's cap on his head, made it look a hundred years old the frame was all of that and tried to sell it as a portrait of a 'Gentleman of the Last Century, but it wouldn't work. Fiddles's laugh gave it away.
Soon it became a settled fact that, while the landlady fed two mouths mine and Fiddles's and provided two beds Fiddles in the garret my single board bill covered all the items. 'That is the Herr Painter and his servant, she would say to inquiring strangers who watched us depart for a day's work, Fiddles carrying my easel and traps.
He was sober enough now, but his heavy sleep still showed about his eyes. "The production of the key, my positive statement, backed by the women, and Fiddles's wondering gaze, brought the gendarmes to a halt for a moment, but his previous arrest was against him, and so the boy was finally ordered to put on his clothes and accompany them to the lock-up.
I confined myself to a glass of sherry and a biscuit, while Fiddles, rising from his seat, later on, stood enraptured before this portrait and that, commenting on their coloring, ending by drawing an ancient book from the library and going into ecstasies over the binding and type. "On our way home to the inn from the chateau there was, so far as I could see, no change in Fiddles's manner.
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