The prisoner would confess to nothing, but swore prodigiously at the tipsy young people who had disturbed him in the fulfilment of his duty.  One of the secretaries of the Finance Minister repeated the whole verse to him.  The soldiers standing about laughed aloud, but the ancient watchman swore with tears in his eyes that he had never thought of such a thing.  While the examination was going on, and one of the secretaries of the Finance Minister began to be doubtful whether the poor watchman was really in fault or not, an uproar was heard outside, and loud cries of “Watch, watch!”

The guard rushed out, and in a few minutes the Field-Marshal entered the office, accompanied by the captain of the guards on duty.  “Have that scoundrel locked up tight,” said the Marshal, pointing behind him—­and two soldiers brought in a watchman, whom they held close prisoner, and whom they had disarmed of his staff and horn.

“Are the watchmen gone all mad to-night?” exclaimed the chief of police.

“I’ll have the rascal punished for his infamous verses,” said the Field-Marshal angrily.

“Your excellency,” exclaimed the trembling watchman, “as true as I live, I never made a verse in my born days.”

“Silence, knave!” roared the Marshal.  “I’ll have you hanged for them!  And if you contradict me again, I’ll cut you in two on the spot.”

The police officer respectfully observed to the Field-Marshal that there must be some poetical epidemic among the watchmen, for three had been brought before him within the last quarter of an hour, accused of the same offence.

“Gentlemen,” said the Marshal to the officers who had accompanied him, “since the scoundrel refuses to confess, it will be necessary to take down from your remembrance the worlds of his atrocious libel.  Let them be written down while you still recollect them.  Come, who can say them?”

The officer of police wrote to the dictation of the gentlemen who remembered the whole verses between them: 

    “On empty head a flaunting feather,
     A long queue tied with tape and leather;
     Padded breast and waist so little,
     Make the soldier to a tittle;
     By cards and dance, and dissipation,
     He’s sure to win a Marshal’s station.”

“Do you deny, you rascal,” cried the Field-Marshal to the terrified watchman; “do you deny that you sang these infamous lines as I was coming out of my house?”

“They may sing it who like, it was not me,” said the watchman.

“Why did you run away, then, when you saw me?”

“I did not run away.”

“What!” said the two officers who had accompanied the Marshal—­“not run away?  Were you not out of breath when at last we laid hold of you there by the market?”

“Yes, but it was with fright at being so ferociously attacked.  I am trembling yet in every limb.”