owever, to get
their eyes thoroughly open, when, just as it wanted half a minute of
noon, the rascal bounced, as I say, right into the midst of them; gave
a chassez here, and a balancez there; and then, after a pirouette and
a pas-de-zephyr, pigeon-winged himself right up into the belfry of the
House of the Town Council, where the wonder-stricken belfry-man sat
smoking in a state of dignity and dismay. But the little chap seized him
at once by the nose; gave it a swing and a pull; clapped the big chapeau
de-bras upon his head; knocked it down over his eyes and mouth; and
then, lifting up the big fiddle, beat him with it so long and so
soundly, that what with the belfry-man being so fat, and the fiddle
being so hollow, you would have sworn that there was a regiment of
double-bass drummers all beating the devil's tattoo up in the belfry of
the steeple of Vondervotteimittiss.

There is no knowing to what desperate act of vengeance this unprincipled
attack might have aroused the inhabitants, but for the important fact
that it now wanted only half a second of noon. The bell was about to
strike, and it was a matter of absolute and pre-eminent necessity that
every body should look well at his watch. It was evident, however, that
just at this moment the fellow in the steeple was doing something that
he had no business to do with the clock. But as it now began to strike,
nobody had any time to attend to his manoeuvres, for they had all to
count the strokes of the bell as it sounded.

"One!" said the clock.

"Von!" echoed every little old gentleman in every leather-bottomed
arm-chair in Vondervotteimittiss. "Von!" said his watch also; "von!"
said the watch of his vrow; and "von!" said the watches of the boys, and
the little gilt repeaters on the tails of the cat and pig.

"Two!" continued the big bell; and

"Doo!" repeated all the repeaters.

"Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!" said the bell.

"Dree! Vour! Fibe! Sax! Seben! Aight! Noin! Den!" answered the others.

"Eleven!" said the big one.

"Eleben!" assented the little ones.

"Twelve!" said the bell.

"Dvelf!" they replied perfectly satisfied, and dropping their voices.

"Und dvelf it is!" said all the little old gentlemen, putting up their
watches. But the big bell had not done with them yet.

"Thirteen!" said he.

"Der Teufel!" gasped the little old gentlemen, turning pale, dropping
their pipes, and putting down all their right legs from over