you."

"'True,' said the shrew-mouse, 'the door has just fallen. I hear
nothing!'

"'Ah, I see,' said the old rogue.

"And he made for the pile of corn, from which he commenced to take his
store for the winter.

"'Did you hear anything?' asked he.

"'I hear the pit-a-pat of my heart.'

"'Kouick!' cried all the mice; 'we shall be able to hoodwink him.'

"The shrew-mouse, fancying that he had met with a faithful vassal,
opened the trap of his musical orifice, and heard the noise of the
grain going towards the hole. Then, without having recourse to
forfeiture, the justice of commissaries, he sprang upon the old mouse
and squeezed him to death. Glorious death! for the hero died in the
thick of the grain, and was canonised as a martyr. The shrew-mouse
took him by the ears and placed him on the door the granary, after the
fashion of the Ottoman Porte, where my good Panurge was within an ace
of being spitted. At the cries of the dying wretch the rats, mice, and
others made for their holes in great haste. When the night had fallen
they came to the cellar, convoked for the purpose of holding a council
to consider public affairs; to which meeting, in virtue of the
Papyrian and other laws, their lawful wives were admitted. The rats
wished to pass before the mice, and serious quarrels about precedence
nearly spoiled everything; but a big rat gave his arm to a mouse, and
the gaffer rats and gammer mice being paired off in the same way, all
were soon seated on their rumps, tails in air, muzzles stretched,
whiskers stiff, and their eyes brilliant as those of a falcon. Then
commenced a deliberation, which finished up with insults and a
confusion worthy of an ecumenical council of holy fathers. One said
this and another said that, and a cat passing by took fright and ran
away, hearing these strange noises: 'Bou, bou, grou, ou, ou, houic,
houic, briff, briffnac, nac, nac, fouix, fouix, trr, trr, trr, trr,
za, za, zaaa, brr, brr, raaa, ra, ra, ra, fouix!' so well blended
together in a babel of sound, that a council at the Hotel de Ville
could not have made a greater hubbub. During this tempest a little
mouse, who was not old enough to enter parliament, thrust through a
chink her inquiring snout, the hair on which was as downy as that of
all mice, too downy to be caught. As the tumult increased, by degrees
her body followed her nose, until she came to the hoop of a cask,
against which she so dextrously squatted that she might hav