ne seldom sees
excelled. A little vain you are of it, no doubt; but no matter, look
at yourself, people shall not say that envy prevented me from allowing
you to see yourself in my glass."

Thus spoke the barber, and a yell of laughter resounded through the
room. In the meantime the dwarf had stepped to the glass and looked at
himself. The tears came in his eyes, while saying to himself; "Yes,
dear mother, thus you could not indeed recognise your James, he did not
look like this in the days of your happiness, when you delighted to
show him off before the people?" His eyes had become little, like
those of pigs; his nose was immense, hanging over his mouth down to his
chin; his neck seemed to have been taken away altogether, for his head
sat low between his shoulders, and it was only with the greatest pain
that he could move it to the right or left; his body was still the same
size as it had been seven years ago, when he was twelve years old, so
that he had grown in width what others do in height, between the ages
of twelve and twenty. His back and chest stood out like two short,
well-filled bags; and this thick-set body was supported by small thin
legs, which seemed hardly sufficient to support their burden; but so
much the larger were his arms, which hung down from his body, being of
the size of those of a full-grown man; his hands were coarse, and of a
brownish hue, his fingers long, like spiders' legs, and when he
stretched them to their full extent, he could touch the ground without
stooping. Such was little James's appearance, now that he had become
an ugly dwarf. He now remembered the morning on which the old woman
had stopped before his mother's baskets. All that he then had found
fault with in her--viz., her long nose, and ugly fingers--all these she
had given him, only omitting her long, palsied neck.

"Well, my prince, have you looked enough at yourself now?" said the
barber, stepping up to him, and surveying him with a laugh. "Truly, if
we wished to dream of such a figure, we could hardly see one so
comical. Nevertheless, I will make you a proposition, my little man.
My shaving-room is tolerably well frequented, but yet not so much so as
I could wish. That arises from my neighbour, the barber Schaum, having
discovered a giant, who attracts much custom to his house. Now, to
become a giant is no great thing, after all, but to be such a little
man as you, is indeed a different thing. Enter my servic