The St. Andrew's shooting-match will take place in the seventh chapter: the present one fills up the wintry thorny interval up to that period--that is to say, the wolf-month with its wolf-hunger. Siebenkæs would at that period have been much annoyed if any one had told him beforehand with what compassion the flourishing state of his trading enterprises was one day to be described by me, and, as a consequence, read by millions of persons in all time to come. He wanted no pity, and said, "If _I_ am quite happy, why should _you_ be pitying me?" The articles of household furniture which he had touched, as with the hand of death, or notched with his axe, like trees marked for cutting, were one by one duly felled and hauled away. The mirror, with the floral border, in the bedroom (which, luckily for itself, could not see itself in any other), was the first thing to be tolled out of the house by the passing- or vesper-bell, under the pall of an apron. Before he stationed it in the train of this dance of death, he proposed to Lenette a substitute for it, the checked calico mourning-dress, in order to accustom her to the idea. It was the "Censeo Carthaginem delendam" (I vote for the destruction of Carthage) which old Cato used to say daily in the senate after every speech. Next the old arm-chair was got rid of bodily (not like Shakespeare's arm-chair, which was weighed out by the ounce, like saffron, or in carats, like gold), and the firedog went in company with it. Siebenkæs had the wisdom to say, before they went away, "Censeo Carthaginem delendam," _i. e_. "Wouldn't it be better to pawn the checked calico?" They could barely subsist for two days upon the dog and the chair. And then the process of alchemical transmutation of metals was applied to the shaving-basin and the bedroom crockery, which were converted into table-money. Of course he previously said "Censeo." It is scarcely worth the trouble, but I may just observe here how little fruit was born by this branch of trade; it was rather a woody branch than a fruit-bearing one. The lean porcelain cow or butter-boat would scarcely have served as their nourishing milch cow for more than a day, if she had not been attended by seven potentates (that is to say, most miserable prints of them), who went "into the bargain," but for whom the woman at the shop added some melted butter. Wherefore he said "Censeo." Many of my readers must remember my mentioning that, a short time ago, when he was distributing sentences of death among the furniture, he did not take very much notice of certain table-napkins which were lying beside the checked calico dress. Now, however, he acted as screech-owl, or bird of death, and gallows-priest to them also, and routed them out all but a few. When they were gone, he remarked, in an incidental manner, shortly before Martinmas Day, that the napkin-press was still to the fore, though it was not very clear what was the use of it, as there was nothing for it to press.