"Count, farewell!" interrupted the leader of the party; and all turned
round indignantly to leave the room.

"Farewell, gentlemen, as you positively will not drink my aunt's
health; though, after all, she was a worthy fellow; and her plaster for
gunshot wounds--"

But with that word the door closed upon the count's farewell words.
Suddenly taking up a hat which lay upon the ground, he exclaimed, "Ah!
behold! one of my friends has left his hat. Truly he may chance to want
it on a frosty night." And, so saying, he hastily rushed after the
party, whom he found already on the steps of the portico. Seizing the
hand of the leader, he whispered,

"Friend! do you know me so little as to apprehend my jesting in a
serious sense? Know that two of those whom you saw on my right hand are
spies of the Landgrave. Their visit to me, I question not, was
purposely made to catch some such discoveries as you, my friends, would
too surely have thrown in their way, but for my determined rattling. At
this time, I must not stay. Come again after midnight--farewell."

And then, in a voice to reach his guests within, he shouted,
"Gentlemen, my aunt, the abbot of Ingelheim,--abbess, I would say,--
held that her spurs were for her heels, and her beaver for her head.
Whereupon, baron, I return you your hat."

Meantime, the two insidious intelligencers of the Landgrave returned to
the palace with discoveries, not so ample as they were on the point of
surprising, but sufficient to earn thanks for themselves, and to guide
the counsels of their master.