like carpets; that a beadle climbed up on a high ladder and took down the sun, and that the tailor Kilian stood by and said to himself, "I must go home and dress myself neatly, for I am dead and am to be buried this afternoon." And it grew darker and darker--a few stars glimmered meagrely on high, and these too, at length, fell down like yellow leaves in autumn; one by one all men vanished, and I, poor child, wandered around in anguish, and finally found myself before the willow fence of a deserted farmhouse, where I saw a man digging up the earth with a spade, and near him an ugly, spiteful-looking woman, who held something in her apron like a human head--but it was the moon, and she laid it carefully in the open grave--and behind me stood the Palatine invalid, sighing, and spelling out "The Prince Elector has abdicated." When I awoke the sun shone as usual through the window, there was a sound of drums in the street, and as I entered the sitting-room and said "good morning" to my father, who was sitting in his white dressing-gown, I heard the little light-footed barber, as he dressed his hair, narrate very minutely that allegiance would be sworn to the Grande Duke Joachim that morning at the City Hall. I heard, too, that the new ruler was of excellent family, that he had married the sister of the Emperor Napoleon, and was really a very respectable man; that he wore his beautiful black hair in flowing locks, that he would shortly make his entrance into the town, and, in fine, that he was sure to please all the ladies. Meanwhile the drumming in the streets continued, and I went out before the house-door and looked at the French troops marching in that joyous people of glory, who, singing and playing, swept over the world, the serious and yet merry-faced grenadiers, the bear-skin shakoes, the tri-colored cockades, the glittering bayonets, the _voltigeurs_, full of vivacity and _point d'honneur_, and the omnipotent giant-like silver-laced tambour major, who could cast his _baton_ with a gilded head as high as the first story, and his eyes even to the second, where also there were pretty girls sitting at the windows. I was so glad that soldiers were to be quartered in our house--in which my mother differed from me--and I hastened to the market-place. There everything looked changed, somewhat as though the world had been newly whitewashed. A new coat-of-arms was placed on the City Hall, its iron balconies were hung with embroidered velvet drapery. French grenadiers stood as sentinels; the old city councilors had put on new faces, and donned their Sunday coats, and looked at each other Frenchily, and said, "_Bonjour!_" Ladies gazed from every window, curious citizens and glittering soldiers filled the square, and I, with other boys, climbed on the great bronze horse of the Prince Elector, and thence stared down on the motley crowd.