r to
cry. First he laughed, and then he grumbled again, but finally he sat
him down before the savoury cold meat, which had been basted with the
finest lard and flavoured with good cream-like wine sauce, and began to
cram himself full with morsel after morsel so huge that there was surely
never a mouse in the wide world half so big. And thus he not only filled
himself, but satisfied the Nabob also.

And now, at a sign from the Nabob, the heydukes carried in all the cold
dishes they had brought with them, and shoved the loaded table along
till it stood opposite the couch on which he lay. At the lower end of
the table three camp-stools were placed, and on them sat the three
favourites, the jester, the greyhound, and the poet. The Nabob gradually
acquired an appetite by watching these three creatures eat, and by
degrees the wine put them all on the most familiar terms with one
another, the poet beginning to call the gipsy "my lord," while the gipsy
metaphorically buttonholed the Nabob, who scattered petty witticisms on
the subject of the mouse, whereat the two others were obliged to laugh
with all their might.

At last, when the worthy gentleman really believed that it was quite
impossible to play any more variations on the well-worn topic of the
mouse, the gipsy suddenly put his hand to his bosom, and cried with a
laugh, "Here's the mouse!" And with that he drew it forth from the
inside pocket of his frock-coat, where he had shoved it unobserved,
while the terrified company fancied he had swallowed it, and in sheer
despair had soothed him by making him eat and drink all manner of good
things.

"Look, Mat!" said he to the dog, whereupon the greyhound immediately
swallowed the _corpus delicti_.

"You good-for-nothing rascal!" cried the nobleman, "so you'd bandy jests
with me, would you! I'll have you hanged for this. Here, you heydukes,
fetch a rope! Hoist him upon that beam!"

The heydukes immediately took their master at his word. They seized the
gipsy, who never ceased laughing, mounted him on a chair, threw the
halter round his neck, drew the extreme end of the rope across the beam,
and drew away the chair from beneath him. The gipsy kicked and
struggled, but it was of no avail; there they kept him till he really
began to choke, when they lowered him to the ground again.

But now he began to be angry. "I am dying," he cried. "I am not a fool
that you should hoist me up again, when I can die as I am, like an
hone