"Well," said Friesshardt, "and why not bow before an empty hat? Thou
hast oft bow'd before an empty skull. Ha, ha! I was always one for a
joke, yer know."

   "Here come some people," said Leuthold. "At last! And they're only the
rabble, after all. You don't catch any of the better sort of people
coming here."

   A crowd was beginning to collect on the edge of the meadow. Its numbers
swelled every minute, until quite a hundred of the commoner sort must
have been gathered together. They stood pointing at the pole and
talking among themselves, but nobody made any movement to cross the
meadow.

   At last somebody shouted "Yah!"

   The soldiers took no notice.

   Somebody else cried "Booh!"'

   "Pass along there, pass along!" said the soldiers.

   Cries of "Where did you get that hat?" began to come from the body of
the crowd. When the Swiss invented a catch-phrase they did not drop it
in a hurry.

   "Where—did—you—get—that—HAT?" they shouted.

   Friesshardt and Leuthold stood like two statues in armour, paying no
attention to the remarks of the rabble. This annoyed the rabble. They
began to be more personal.

   "You in the second-hand lobster-tin," shouted one—he meant
Friesshardt, whose suit of armour, though no longer new, hardly
deserved this description—"who's your hatter?"

   "Can't yer see," shouted a friend, when Friesshardt made no reply, "the
pore thing ain't alive? 'E's stuffed!"

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