horse, and looked down on the motley crowd. Neighbour Peter and Long Conrad nearly broke their necks on this occasion, and that would have been well, for the one afterwards ran away from his parents, enlisted as a soldier, deserted, and was finally shot in Mayence, while the other, having made geographical researches in strange pockets, became a working member of a public tread-mill institute. But having broken the iron bands which bound him to his fatherland, he passed safely beyond sea, and eventually died in London, in consequence of wearing a much too long cravat, one end of which happened to be firmly attached to something, just as a royal official removed a plank from beneath his feet. Long Conrad told us there was no school to-day on account of the homage. We had to wait a long time till this was over. At last the balcony of the Council House was filled with gay gentlemen, flags and trumpets, and our burgomaster, in his celebrated red coat, delivered an oration, which stretched out like India rubber, or like a night-cap into which one has thrown a stone--only that it was not the stone of wisdom--and I could distinctly understand many of his phrases, for instance, that "we are now to be made happy"--and at the last words the trumpets and drums sounded, and the flags waved, and the people cried Hurrah!--and as I myself cried Hurrah! I held fast to the old Prince Elector. And that was necessary, for I began to grow giddy; it seemed to me that the people were standing on their heads while the world whizzed around, and the Prince Elector, with his long wig, nodded and whispered, "Hold fast to me!"--and not till the cannon re-echoed along the wall did I become sobered, and climbed slowly down from the great bronze horse. As I went home I saw crazy Aloysius again dancing on one leg, while he chattered the names of French generals, and crooked Gumpertz was rolling in the gutter drunk, and growling _ça ira, ça ira_--and I said to my mother that we were all to be made happy, and so there was no school to-day. CHAPTER VII.