long table, round which leaned
despondingly a dozen of empty chairs. Vendel-gazda sat near the
cupboard, in a red flannel dressing-gown and a pointed white cap with
a blue border; his hands, which were placed on his vast stomach, held
a plated snuff-box, and with his legs outstretched beneath the table,
he snored away to his heart's content, while the much-esteemed goblet
stood before him like an old fat dame with her arms a-kimbo.

Hanzli having closed the shutters, and looked about him to see that
all was right, listened hard for a few moments to his master's deep
breathing, as he bobbed behind the tankard, and then hastily making up
his mind, he shambled over with long strides on tiptoe--hands, eyes,
and mouth all moving together, as if he were stepping with each of
them, and, pausing before the table, he raised one leg, balanced
himself on the other, and peeped into the depths of the tankard. It
was still half full. This was enough. Having once more peeped into it
to make sure that his imagination was not deceiving him, he seized it
by the two ears, and, raising it to his month, began to draw in the
unoffered beverage, his knees bending under him, and his eyes starting
from his head with the enormous exertion.

As he continued raising the huge tankard till half his head was within
it, a tremendous explosion was suddenly heard in the kitchen, as if
pots and pans were being thrown at somebody's head, which so startled
Hanzli that he emptied the remains of the barley nectar over his head
and shoulders; and what was his mortification when, on replacing the
empty tankard, he encountered Vendel's green eye staring at him wide
open, as if to say, "I see you, my lad; and I wish you good health!"
but that was not what he said.

"Hanzli, my lad, go and see what is broken in the kitchen." Could he
have uttered a severer reproof?

But Hanzli had too much sense and too much confidence in his master's
goodness to believe that he was in earnest; he knew that he would
probably return with the answer that it was his nose that was broken;
and having recovered from his first embarrassment, he merely drew a
long breath terminating in a whistle, and shook his head until the
shake resolved itself into a wave.

"Poor Master Vendel!" he seemed to say; "it was another world in
Mistress Nani's lifetime; you were not then roused from your sleep in
this manner."

Vendel-gazda replied by a pitiful gaze at Hanzli. He would have
clasped h