The Saxon had but to graze the eagle-torso--ay, or even the perch of it--nay, the very evening breeze had but to give an extra puff--to send the bird of prey swooping down. He had his rifle to his shoulder--aimed for a whole eternity (there were fifty florins hanging in the sky)--and pulled his trigger. The powder flashed in the pan. The band had all their trumpets ready at their lips--trumpets horizontal, music perpendicular--the boys stood round ready to seize the fallen skeleton; the buffoon in his excitement couldn't think of a joke to make--his ideas were all up beside the bird; the poor, anxious, eager, excited hairdresser drew his trigger once more, and again 'twas but a flash in the pan. Great drops of perspiration bedewed him; he glowed, he trembled; loaded, aimed, fired, and sent his bullet several ells, at the least, away over the bird. He stepped back, pale and silent, in a cold perspiration; not an oath did he utter; nay, I suspect he offered up a silent prayer or two that his co-partner might, by heaven's grace, capture the feathered game. Firmian went forward, thinking as hard as he could about something else, to keep down his thrilling excitement; aimed, not very long, at this, his anchor in his little storms, as it hung hovering in the twilight, fired; saw the old stump turn three times round in the air, like Fortune's wheel, and, at last, break loose, and come pitching down. As, when the old French kings were crowned, a live bird always fluttered in the air; as, at the apotheoses of the Roman emperors, an eagle soared skyward from out the funeral pyre, so did one swoop downward from the heavens at the coronation of my hero. The children screamed, and the trumpets blared. One moiety of the assemblage crowded to see who the new king was, and to have a look at him; while the other moiety streamed crowding round the jester, as he advanced bearing that shattered bullet-case, the eagle's body, holding it up above the heads of the throng. The barber ran to meet it, crying, "Vive le roi," and adding that he was a king himself into the bargain; and Firmian moved towards the door in silence, full of happiness, but fuller of emotion. And now it is time that we should all of us hurry to the town to see how Rosa fares, what kind of throne he gains _chez_ Madame Siebenkæs (while her husband is thus ascending _his_)--a richer throne, or only a pillory--and what number of steps he climbs towards whichever of the two it may prove to be.