A TERRIBLE THREAT.

Patea Mail, Volume 1, Issue 17, 9 June 1875, Page 3

A TERRIBLE THREAT.

Among the bravest and most energetic of the Silesian noblemen who gave trouble to Frederick the Great of Prussia was Baron Lieben. Once upon a time a crowd of riotous peasants came to the baron’s castle of Falconberg, making the most outrageous demands, threatening to burn, kill, and lay waste if their demands were not complied with. The nobleman retired to his amorial chamber, and directed that the deputation should be admitted. The aggressive peasants, to the number of 50, or more, well heated with liquor, entered the room, and when they were all in, the baron shut the heavy oaken door and locked it, and threw the key out through the open window. Then he sat down upon his sofa, with a powder-barrel at his elbow, and, taking from his mouth the welllighted cigar which he had been smoking, he exclaimed, in dire and dreadful wrath, “ Miscreants, if you do not immediately go down upon your knees, and ask my pardon, and then go out at yonder window, I will apply my cigar to this barrel of powder, and we will all goto destruction together !” The effect was magical. The peasants knew the old warrior too well to think of doubting the truth of his diabolical threat. Down they went upon their knees, sobered enough to ask his pardon, and they went out at the window, after the key, much preferring the risk of injury from the leap to remaining in the neighbourhood of that dreadful magazine, with the lighted cigar of the Baron Lieben in such terrible juxtaposition.