The Marshal hesitated.
"Am I not understood ?" said I; and, biting his moustache again, he gave the orders.

I saw old Sapt smiling into his beard, but he shook his head at me.

If I had been killed in open day in the streets of Strelsau, Sapt's position would have been a difficult one.
Perhaps I ought to say that I was dressed all in white, except my boots.
I wore a silver helmet with gilt ornaments, and the broad ribbon of the Rose looked well across my chest.

I should be paying a poor compliment to the King if I did not set modesty aside and admit that I made a very fine figure.

So the people thought; for when I, riding alone, entered the dingy, sparsely decorated, sombre streets of the Old Town, there was first a murmur, then a cheer, and a woman, from a window above a cookshop, cried the old local saying: "If he's red, he's right!" whereat I laughed and took off my helmet that she might see that I was of the right colour and they cheered me again at that.
It was more interesting riding thus alone, for I heard the comments of the crowd.
"He looks paler than his wont," said one.
"You'd look pale if you lived as he does," was the highly disrespectful retort.
"He's a bigger man than I thought," said another.
"So he had a good jaw under that beard after all," commented a third.
"The pictures of him aren't handsome enough," declared a pretty girl, taking great care that I should hear.