He won't let you greasy burghers trample
on an old comrade. He bade me carry you a message too."
"The duke send a message to me?"
"Ay! I told him of your masterful doings, of your imprisoning Gerard
for loving a girl; and says he, 'Tell him this is to be a king, not
a burgomaster. I'll have no kings in Holland but one. Bid him be more
humble, or I'll hang him at his own door,'"
(Ghysbrecht trembled: he thought the duke capable of the deed)
"'as I hanged the burgomaster of Thingembob.' The duke could not mind
which of you he had hung, or in what part; such trifles stick not in a
soldier's memory; but he was sure he had hanged one of you for grinding
poor folk, 'and I'm the man to hang another,' quoth the good duke."
These repeated insults from so mean a man, coupled with his
invulnerability, shielded as he was by the duke, drove the choleric old
man into a fit of impotent fury: he shook his fist at the soldier,
and tried to threaten him, but could not speak for the rage and
mortification that choked him: then he gave a sort of screech, and
coiled himself up in eye and form like a rattlesnake about to strike;
and spat furiously upon Martin's doublet.
The thick-skinned soldier treated this ebullition with genuine contempt.
"Here's a venomous old toad! he knows a kick from his foot would send
him to his last home; and he wants me to cheat the gallows.
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