[_MIELCHEN does so._] The ginger-bread
nuts are for you. Not all at once, though, you baggage! And a song first!
The fox jumped up on a ... come, now ... The fox jumped up ... on a
moonlight ... Mind, I've heard what you did. You called the sparrows on
the churchyard hedge a nasty name, and they're gone and told the pastor.
Did any one ever hear the like? Fifteen hundred of them agog--men, women,
and children. [_Distant bells are heard._] That's at Reichenbach--
alarm-bells! Fifteen hundred people! Uncomfortably like the world coming
to an end!
OLD HILSE
An' is it true that they're on their way to Bielau?
SURGEON SCHMIDT
That's just what I'm telling you, I've driven through the middle of the
whole crowd. What I'd have liked to do would have been to get down and
give each of them a pill there and then. They were following on each
other's heels like misery itself, and their singing was more than enough
to turn a man's stomach. I was nearly sick, and Frederick was shaking on
the box like an old woman. We had to take a stiff glass at the first
opportunity. I wouldn't be a manufacturer, not though I could drive my
carriage and pair. [_Distant singing._] Listen to that! It's for all the
world as if they were beating at some broken old boiler.
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