Thus spoke the barber, and a yell of laughter resounded through the room. In the meantime the dwarf had stepped to the glass and looked at himself. The tears came in his eyes while saying to himself: 'Yes, dear mother, thus you could not indeed recognise your Jacob; he did not look like this in the days of your happiness, when you delighted to show him off before the people?' His eyes had become little, like those of a pig; his nose was immense, hanging over his mouth down to his chin; his neck seemed to have been taken away altogether, for his head sat low between his shoulders, and it was only with the greatest pain that he could move it to the right or left; his body was still the same size as it had been seven years ago, when he was twelve years old, so that he had grown in width what others do in height between the ages of twelve and twenty. His back and chest stood out like two short, well-filled bags; and this thick-set body was supported by small thin legs, which seemed hardly sufficient to support their burden; but so much the larger were his arms, which hung down from his body, being of the size of those of a full-grown man; his hands were coarse, and of a brownish hue, his fingers long, like spiders' legs, and when he stretched them to their full extent he could touch the ground without stooping. Such was little Jacob's appearance, now that he had been turned into an ugly dwarf. He remembered the morning on which the old woman had stopped before his mother's baskets. All that he then had found fault with in her--viz., her long nose and ugly fingers--all these she had given him, only omitting her long, palsied neck. 'Well, my prince, have you looked enough at yourself now?' said the barber, stepping up to him, and surveying him with a laugh. 'Truly, if we wished to dream of such a figure, we could hardly see one so comical. Nevertheless I will make you a proposition, my little man. My shaving-room is tolerably well frequented, but yet not so much as I could wish. That arises from my neighbour, the barber Schaum, having discovered a giant, who attracts much custom to his house. Now, to become a giant is no great thing, after all, but to be such a little man as you is indeed a different thing. Enter my service, little man; you shall have board and lodging, clothes, and everything; for this you shall stand in my doorway in the morning, and invite people to come in; you shall beat the lather, hand the towel to the customers, and you may be sure that we shall both make it answer; I shall get more customers through you than my neighbour by his giant, and you will get many presents.' The little man felt quite indignant at the proposal of serving as a decoy to a barber. But was he not obliged to submit patiently to this insulting offer? He therefore quietly told the barber he had no time for such services, and went away.