The ball now began. A number of canaries from their respective cages sang waltzes and _habaneras_. The cornets and the clarionets too were very skilful in pressing their keys all by themselves; the violins pinched their own strings; and the trumpets blew into each other. Migajas thought this music was entrancing. It is unnecessary to say that the princess danced with him. The other ladies found partners among the officers of the army and the sovereigns who had left their horses outside. Among these were Prince Bismarck, the Emperor of Germany, and Napoleon. Migajas was beside himself with pride and excitement. It would be impossible to describe the emotions of his soul as he dashed into the dizzy whirls of the waltz with his beloved in his arms. Her soft breathing and an occasional stray lock of her golden hair caressed his cheek, tickling him gently and producing a strange intoxication. A loving glance or a little sigh of fatigue would every now and then put a climax to his madness. Suddenly the monkeys appeared and announced supper. This caused a great commotion. Migajas rejoiced greatly, for with no prejudice to the spiritual character of his love, the poor little fellow was very hungry. IX. The dining-hall was superb and the table exquisite. The china was of the very finest manufactured for dolls, and a multitude of bouquets showed their colors and scattered their fragrance from egg-stands and thimbles. Pacorrito sat at the princess's right. They began to eat. The parrots and paper birds waited upon them with such order and rapidity that they seemed like soldiers drilling before their general. The dishes were delicious. Everything was raw, or at all events cold. Migajas was rather pleased with the supper at first, but he was soon surfeited. The menu was as follows: bits of sponge cake, turkeys smaller than birds, which one could swallow at a mouthful, gilt-heads no bigger than almonds, a rich supply of hemp-seed, a pâté of bird-seed à la Canaria, bread-crumb à la perdigona, a fricassée of pheasants' eyes with a sauce of wild mulberries, a salad of moss, delicious sweetmeats, and every possible variety of fruit, harvested by the parrots from the tapestries where they were embroidered, the melons being as small as grapes and the grapes as small as lentils. During the supper the company chattered ceaselessly,--all but Migajas, who, being short of wit, sat there and said never a word. He was confused in the presence of so many gold-corded and uniformed generals. He was amazed, too, at finding so much loquacity and frolicsomeness in these great men, who had stood stiff and dumb in the show-window as though they were made of clay.