asimus, Johannes the capuchin monk, Borves Fritz the
clarionet-player at the Pied de Boeuf, and half a hundred more, laughing,
singing, drinking, playing at _youker_, draining jugs and glasses, eating
puddings and _andouilles_.

Mother Gredel was coming and going; the pretty maid-servants, Heinrichen
and Lotte, were flying up and down the kitchen stairs like squirrels, and
outside, under the broad archway, was the booming, and banging, and
jingling of the big drum and the cymbals, while the exciting proclamation
was being made: "Ho! ho! hi! Great battle to come off! The Asturian bear,
Beppo, and Baptist, the Savoyard bear, against all dogs that may come.
Boom! boom! Walk in, ladies! Walk in, gentlemen! Here's the buffalo from
Calabria, and the onagra of the desert! Walk in, walk in! Don't be
frightened! All walk in!"

And they did come in, in crowds.

Sebaldus, barring the passage with his burly form, as Horatius guarded
the bridge in the brave days of old, shouted to all--

"Your five kreutzers, friends and neighbours! Five kreutzers for
admittance! Pay, or I'll throttle you!"

It was an awful confusion; people climbed over each other's backs to get
in faster, until Bridget Kera lost a stocking and Anna Seiler half her
petticoat.

About two, the bear-leader, a tall, rough-looking fellow, with red ragged
hair and beard, and mounting a high sugar-loafed hat, pushed the door
ajar, and cried, looking in--

"Just going to begin the fight!"

In an instant all the tables were emptied, many an untasted glass being
left upon it. I ran to the hay-loft, climbed up the ladder four steps at a
time, and drew it up after me. There, seated all alone upon a bundle of
hay, just inside the little skylight, I had a capital view.

What a throng! The old galleries were bending under their weight, the
roofs were visibly swaying. I shuddered to think of what might happen.
It seemed inevitable that they would all come down together like grapes
in the wine-press, heaped up in a sea of heads.

They were hanging in clusters on the wooden pillars; yet higher in the
gutters along the roof; yet higher about the pigeon-cote; higher still
over the skylights in the roof of the _mairie_; yet higher in the spire
of St. Christopher's; and all this multitude were howling and shouting--

"The bears! the bears!"

When I had sufficiently admired and wondered at the immense crowd,
looking down I saw in the middle of the court a poor, wretched,
d