'Let him go,' said Bacchus; 'I'm glad he's gone; he bored me with his strong heroics: a fellow ten feet high is out of place here. He showed me no respect. We should never have been able to dance while he was here; his legs would have broken if he had tried.' 'To the dance! to the dance!' they all cried. The wine god beckoned to me. 'Do you understand music, Doctor?' 'A little.' 'Keep good time?' 'Oh yes, I keep good time.' 'Then take this little barrel and this cooper's stave, and sit down besides the Bottomless one there; he is our cellarmaster and cornet player, and you shall accompany him on the drum.' I did as I was bid, but if my drumming was rather unusual, Balthasar's cornet-playing was even more so. He held the iron spout of a large empty cask to his mouth like a clarionet. Two more sat near me with huge wine-funnels which they used as trumpets, waiting for the signal. Then began a fearful rumbling and hooting, all out of tune, to which Turkish music was nothing. Balthasar's instrument had but two notes, the key note and an horribly high falsetto. As for the trumpeters the sounds of grief and anguish which they drew from their funnels was like nothing but the wailing of a Triton on a conch. Bacchus and his sweetheart paraded in the height of the fashion of 200 years ago. Frau Rosa held her skirt wide out with both hands, so that she looked more like a great wine cask than ever. She didn't move far from her place, but tripped a few steps up and down and back again, and kept bobbing with little curtsies. Her partner meanwhile spun round her like a top, snapping his fingers and crying Halloo! [Illustration: 'TO THE DANCE! TO THE DANCE!']