During our recital the twins have been pommelling each other. The aspirant for primogeniture called out there, on the Flachsenfingen road, which was covered with the darkness of night, in one continued yell, "Mr. Court Apothecary!" and as he could not, of course, hear any answer, he was obliged to knock his ear-trumpet against every object, to hear whether it said anything. At last his probing-rod came in contact with the firstborn, and he marched up to him to beg his forgiveness and return. But the Apothecary was in such a boiling and overflowing state, that, when the bellows-blower ducked his head to take in his answer, he made up his hand into a ball and let it fall like a bell-hammer on the sagittal suture of the bended head, whereupon the diving-bell gave out a regular tone. The Apothecary, if one had rightly understood him and given him time, would by this trip-hammer have made the sutures on the deaf-head considerably more prominent; but in this he was disturbed by his own brother, who bent his head down like a bush,--for the bellows-blower would have inserted his fingers like ornamental pins into the artificial hair and dragged him by that, if the peruke had been made fast on his head,--so that he could lay his hearing-tube as a second backbone so stoutly and yet so carefully along the twin's first, that no one came off with compound fractures, except the hearing-tube.--Thereupon he said good night, and recommended him to keep to the left, in order not to lose his way.... --Had I known that this history would overshadow so many leaves, I would sooner have thrown it away.--The next morning the impudent Matthieu paid a visit to the cross-bearer, on whose hands the chiragra, warmed into maturity by wrath, was burning; he was going now--for he answered every reproach against his shamelessness with a greater--to make the gouty hands cat's-paws again to take fresh chestnuts of fun out of the fire. But the Apothecary, whose heart was only small, but not black, felt himself too sorely injured, and when Matthieu, laughing at his complaints, departed from him in silence, without even giving himself the trouble of an excuse, then the chiragrist swore--and there we have the fool again--to upset him.