The tower, four hundred feet high, of which the placards at all the street corners had spoken, had changed, it is true, into an oak of perhaps forty feet in height, and the enemies and rivals of the Flying Pigeon--and what great artist is without enemies?--insisted upon it that this change in the programme diminished not only the danger but also the interest of the daring feat. But it was not Mr. John Cotterby's fault, surely, that in the Thirty Years' War the Imperialists had shot to pieces the steeple of the little church on the public square of Fichtenau, which was then held by the Swedes. Nor was he to be blamed if the paternal government had now for two hundred years annually determined to rebuild the steeple, but never accomplished it yet. What could he do, Mr. John Cotterby, of Egypt, if, for want of better times to come, the church on the square was to this day without a steeple? Certainly, if the conscience of the Flying Pigeon was as innocent of every other crime as of this, he could perform his great feat, even with the change of the programme, unblushingly before the potentates of Europe and Asia, and the nobility and highly cultivated public of Fichtenau. And without blushing--unless the carmine of his rouge should be interpreted as the flush of modesty--the Flying Pigeon now presented himself upon a little scaffolding, hung with soiled linen sheets, to begin his journey heavenward, accompanied by desperate efforts of the clarinet and the big drum, which were at that solemn moment reinforced by the tinkling of a triangle and the squeaking of a tuneless fiddle. He was a handsome, well-made man, and quite young; his dark curly hair was confined by a narrow band of brass, and his whole costume consisted of a suit of stockinet which had long lost its first color of innocent white, and a jacket of the same material, to which on the shoulders two wings had been fastened, which, however, had evidently performed such very hard service that they had lost many a feather on previous occasions. Encouraging applause greeted the artist and drowned easily the hissing of the opposition; he bowed gracefully all around, with an air which is only found among circus riders, rope-dancers, and other members of that airy guild, while other mortals in vain endeavor to imitate it, and thus to rob them of their exclusive secret. But the applause ceased suddenly, when to the astonishment of the whole audience a huge, shapeless figure was seen climbing after the courteous artist upon the platform, and presenting him, after a hearty slap upon the place between the Icarus wings, with a long slip of paper! The white nightcap, the large blue apron, but above all the enormous, deep-red nose, left no one who was learned in such matters long in doubt as to the nature of the man; they saw at once in him the owner of a beer-shop, or something of the kind, and in the paper an unpaid bill.