h the crowd,
walked up into the town-hall. The commissioner of police gave the
round box a touch, and as it turned round some six or seven times one
might almost have heard a raindrop fall. "Now," said he laughing,
"good luck to you!" and the peasant, plunging his hand into the trap
of the box, drew out a little piece of card-board rolled into a curl.
"No. 17," shouted the infantry captain, taking it from his hands and
reading it, whilst a loud roar of laughter from the mob hailed the
dismal face with which the unhappy lad heard of his ill-success.

"Oh, what a head for a soldier!" cried some wag in the crowd. "Yes,"
screamed another, "he'll make the Russians run." "Have you chosen your
regiment yet?" barked a third. "Why, of course!" yelped a fourth: "he
is to be fife-player in the second battalion of the pope's
horse-beadles."

And amid a shower of jokes equally witty No. 17 came down, and a
second name was called. After him came a third, and then a fourth, and
so on, all equally unlucky; and no wonder, since all the numbers up to
one hundred were losing ones. There were great differences in the way
in which the youths bore their discomfiture: some went up crying to
the urn and trembled as in an ague whilst it was rolling round; three
stamped and sobbed like children when they had lost, and the crowd,
ever charitable in its doings, threw about their ears by way of
comfort a volley of epigrams which pricked them like so many wasps;
others, on the contrary, went up laughing, and upon drawing a bad
number stuck the card in their hats and came down bandying jokes with
the mob as unconcernedly as though they had been only taking a pinch
of snuff instead of selling seven long years of their lives. Others,
again, trying to imitate the latter, but in reality too miserable to
do so with ease, only succeeded in making themselves ridiculous,
drawing upon themselves an extra amount of squibs from the spectators;
upon which, like young steers worried by mosquitoes, they would begin
distributing kicks and blows right and left with most liberal
profusion, to the no small disgust of the mayor and the immense
amusement of the infantry captain, who laughed like an ox in a
clover-field.

At last a boy went up and drew the number 109: frantic cheers greeted
this check to fortune, and the lucky fellow rushed down with such wild
demonstrations of joy that it would have been no great folly to have
mistaken him for a criminal just reprie