All the numbers who had tried their best to break off this golden oak-branch had shot in vain, except the worst--the most to be dreaded of all--his own predecessor and landlord. _He_ aimed, and shot--and the gilded harpoon quivered. Siebenkæs fired--and the eel-spear came tumbling down. Messrs. Meyern and Blaise smiled, and uttered congratulations; the blowers of instruments, crooked and straight, blew, in honour of the advent of this new bird-member, a blast both loud and shrill (like the Karlsbad people, when a new bath-guest arrives), looking closely and carefully at their music as they did so, though they had played their little _fanfares_ far oftener than the very night-watchmen. All the infantas--I mean all the children--began a race for the sceptre, but the buffoon dashed among them, and scattered them; and, taking up the sceptre, presented that emblem of sovereignty to the advocate with one hand, holding in the other his _own_ emblem of sovereignty, the whip. Siebenkæs contemplated with a smile the little twig of timber--the little branch, sticking to which the buzzing swarms of nations are so often borne away; and he veiled his satisfaction under cover of the following satirical remarks (which the reigning Heimlicher overheard, and applied to himself):-- "A very pretty little frog-shooter! It _ought_, by rights, to be a honey-gauge; but the poor bees are crushed by it, that their honey-bags may be got out of them! The Waiwodes and the despots, child-like, put the bees of the country to death, and take the honey from their _stomachs_, not from, their _combs_. A truly preposterous and absurd implement! It is made of wood; very likely a piece broken off a shepherd's crook, and gilded, pointed, and notched--one of those shepherd's staves with which the shepherds often drag the sheep's fat out of them while they are feeding in the meadows!" He had ceased to be conscious, now, when he emitted the bitterest satirical matter (there was never a drop of it in his heart); he often turned mere acquaintances into foes with some joke, made merely for the sake of jesting; and couldn't imagine what made people vexed with him, and why it was that _he_ couldn't have his little bit of fun with them as well as any one else.