But the chief comedy would always come the next day. For then he would waken, after all, with a head that hummed like a beehive, and then he would rouse himself fully, half morosely, half with a leonine jovial humor that indeed had the dimensions of a lion when compared with the proverbial distemper of the average toper. Early he would then show up at breakfast, the sun shining with strength upon his naked scalp, and ignoring his symptoms, he would jest and make fun of himself and his achievements of the previous night. His wife, then, always hungering after her husband's humor, he being usually rather reticent, would then answer his sallies with a merry laughter, so bell-like and wholesouled as one would never have suspected in a being so demure as she. His children would laugh, also his gamekeepers and huntsmen, and lastly his servants. And in that way the whole day would pass. Everything that day would be done with a bright smile and a salvo of hearty laughter. And always the chief forester leading them all, handling his axe, lifting heavy weights, doing the work of three ordinary men. On such a day it was once that fire broke out in the town. High above burning roofs a poor old woman, in her frail wooden balcony, forgotten and disregarded, was shrilly crying and moaning for help from a fiery death, and above her shoulder her tame starling went through the drollest of antics, likewise claiming attention. Nobody could think of a way to save mistress and bird. The flames came nearer and ever nearer. But our chief forester climbed up to a protruding coping on a high wall facing the old woman's nook, a spot where he stood like a rock. Then with herculean strength he pulled up a long ladder to him, turned it over and balanced it neatly until it touched the window where the old hag was struggling for breath. He placed it securely within the opening, on the sill, and then he strode across it, firm and unafraid, back and forth, carrying the ancient woman safely across his shoulder, and the stuttering starling on his head, the greedily licking flames and the swirling clouds of smoke beneath his feet. And all this he did, not by any means in a heroic pose, as something dangerous or praiseworthy, but as though it were a harmless joke, smiling and laughing. After a solid piece of work of that kind he would feast with his family in jolly style, dishing up the best the house afforded. And at such times he always was particularly tender to his wife, taking her on his knee, to the great amusement of the children, and dubbing her his "little whitebird," and his "swallow," and she, her arms clasped in pleasurable self-forgetfulness, would laughingly watch his antics.