The ragamuffin could find no words with which to answer his beloved. He was sorely incensed at the proposition, which he judged to be a fling at his dignity and decorum. "Let him dance!" shouted the chancellor, impertinently; "let him dance on the table! and if he refuse to do so, I move that he be stripped of the fine clothes we dressed him in, and be left ragged and barefooted as he was when he came." Migajas felt all his blood rush to his heart. He was blind with rage. "Do not be cruel, my dear prince," said the princess, smiling; "leave him to me. I will take it upon myself to dispel the storm that is rising within our good Migajas here." A loud peal of laughter greeted this reply, and all the dolls, and the most celebrated generals and emperors of the world, simultaneously fell to pounding one another's heads like the Punch and Judy puppets. "Make him dance! make him call matches!" they clamored. Migajas felt faint. The sentiment of dignity was so powerfully developed in him that he would have died rather than have gone through the suggested degradation. He was just about to reply when the malignant chancellor, pulling a long thin straw from a work-basket and wetting the end of it in his mouth, drove it into Pacorrito's ear with such a quick movement that the latter did not realize the familiarity of the act until he had suffered the nervous shock produced by tricks of this sort. Blind with rage, he put his hand to his belt and drew the paper-cutter. The ladies shrieked and the princess fainted; but the enraged Migajas, far from being pacified by this, seemed to be growing more and more infuriated, and rushing upon his insolent adversary, he began to deal blows right and left. The air was filled with yells, threats, and imprecations. The parrots croaked and the very birds moved their paper tails in sign of panic. Nobody laughed now at the daring Migajas. A few moments later the chancellor might have been seen going about gathering up his arms and legs (a strange case which cannot be explained), and all the emperors were noseless. They gradually, however, with a little glue and a great deal of innate skill, mended one another,--a rare advantage, this, of puppet surgery. The princess, having recovered from her swoon through the virtue of smelling-salts, administered by her pages in a filbert-shell, called the ragamuffin aside, and leading him to her private apartments, spoke as follows:-- XI. "Most illustrious Migajas, what you have just done, far from lessening my love for you, has only increased it, for you have given evidence of indomitable valor by your easy triumph over this swarm of scoffing puppets, the most despicable class of beings on earth. The tender sentiments that bind me to you move me to propose that you become my husband with no further delay." Pacorrito fell on his knees.