Hisses from the pit. The worthy audience is shocked by the cat's ignoble train of thought. So Hinze lets the nightingale alone; but presently, when a rabbit comes bounding by, he catches him adroitly and puts him into his bag. It is his intention, by the gift of this rabbit, to win the king's heart for his master. "The creature," he reflects aloud, "is a sort of cousin of mine; but it's the way of the world nowadays--kinsman against kinsman, brother against brother!" He is presently strongly tempted to eat the rabbit himself, but overcomes the desire, and cries: "Fie! for shame, Hinze! Is it not the duty of the truly noble to sacrifice themselves and their inclinations to the happiness of their fellow-creatures? It is the end for which we were created, and he who cannot do it--oh! it were better for him that he had never been born!" He is about to retire, but loud applause and cries of _Da Capo_! oblige him to repeat the last speech, after which he bows, and goes off with the rabbit. The audience is in the seventh heaven of delight--Hinze's speech is as effective as one of Iffland's tirades. The satire in Tieck's _Däumling_ ("Hop o' my Thumb") is also of a literary nature, being directed against the neo-classic tendency, and in particular against Goethe. Such a theme, treated, as it was in part, in the dignified metre of Greek tragedy, afforded many opportunities for drollery. All the incidents of the medieval fairy-tale are viewed from the antique standpoint. Of the seven-league boots, for instance, we read: "Trust me; I see quite well that these boots have come down to us from old Greek times. No man in our day produces work like that--so strong, so simple, such noble lines, such stitching! No, no! this is the work of Phidias, there is no doubt about it. Look! When I place the one in this position--how noble, how plastic, how grand in its simplicity! No superfluity, no ornament, no Gothic detail, none of the romantic medley of our days--when sole, leather, flaps, folds, blacking, varnish, must all contribute to produce variety, brilliancy, a dazzling resplendence in which there is nothing ideal. Nowadays the leather must shine, the sole must creak when one sets one's foot down: wretched rhyming trickery of which the ancients knew nothing." Several of Goethe's favourite words are employed in this more sarcastic than witty description.