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4 called her forty-year-old nephew by this term. This youth, in order to receive 'the gracious quality,' had donned the old livery of his late uncle, and we had been obliged to wait until he had brushed it clean. Could he have had more time he would have also put on his stockings; but, as it was, his long bare legs were in good keeping with his scarlet coat. Whether he wore breeches under it I do not know. Our servant John, who, like me, had often heard of 'the chateau,' made a very strange face when the 'boy' led us to the little broken building where the late Herr had dwelt. But he was startled indeed when my mother bade him bring in the beds. How could he suppose there were no beds at 'the chateau'? And the order of my mother to provide sleeping comforts he had either never heard or neglected it as superfluous trouble.

"The little dwelling, just one storey high, which had not boasted in its best days more than five inhabitable rooms, was now a pitiful picture of the passed away. Wrecked furniture, ragged hangings and carpets, not one window-pane unbroken, the floor torn up here and there, and everywhere ugly traces of the most outrageous acts of the soldiery.