th the exception of
an old goat and a gormandizing and insatiable porker.

A much more sedate man than Klaus would have been ready to jump out of
his skin in the midst of so much disaster. Once more he had recourse to
a sale. With a heavy heart he put up his inheritance, and with
inexpressible dismay he received the first buyers. Upon their close
inspection of house and farm, it soon became too apparent that the whole
of the woodwork was thoroughly worm-eaten, and, in the ground-floor,
destructive fungus hard at work. Those who came inclined to buy, shook
their heads and wished him good-morning: and in less than
four-and-twenty hours after their departure, every soul in the parish knew
that Lying Klaus was as good as a bankrupt; that his house was already
tumbling about his ears; and that he himself would be forced to go from
house to house, and practise the art of lattice-tapping.[1]

[1] The more ancient village houses have still, for the most part,
before the house door, a kind of _lattice_, upon which the beggar taps,
by way of announcing himself to the dwellers.

"Rumour in this case proved a true prophet. The end of the summer found
Klaus's homestead all to pieces. The wind whistled through the broken
windows. Rats frolicked about the floor: a lease of the rafters was
taken by a society of martens, and Klaus was left the choice of making
friends with the vermin, or being dislodged from his miserable den
altogether.

"When a poor man suddenly becomes rich, there is no lack of good words
thrown away; but when a rich man suddenly comes to beggary, all that is
said is--that he is a deplorable wretch--that everybody expected it--and
that it serves him right. Klaus led a horrid life. He was shunned by
universal consent. The youngest urchins of the parish threw dirt at him,
made faces, called him Lying Klaus, and trotted after him, imitating the
gait and gestures of an ill-conditioned dwarf. If Klaus entered the
tavern--so lately his own property--the boors shrunk from him as though
he were a leper--the landlord lazily shoved a dirty glass before him,
and looked at the piece of money which he got in exchange, a dozen times
before he put it into his till. The most abandoned criminal, who had
undergone his ten years of imprisonment and hard labour, could not have
been treated more ignominiously. Had Klaus not lived on in a sort of
mental intoxication, he must have committed murder or manslaughter, if,
in his desperatio