of which has been duly wound up:  his lips quivered, his teeth gnashed, his eyes rolled convulsively, until finally there broke forth, in a hoarse oily voice, an uncommonly trivial street-ballad.  Its delivery, accompanied by a regular movement of his outstretched thumbs behind the ears, and during which his fat face glowed the brightest red, was unhappily greeted with a wild burst of laughter from all present, which excited the unlucky master to the most furious wrath.  With studied cruelty this wrath was greeted by those, who until then had shamelessly flattered him, with the most extravagant mockery, until the poor wretch at last absolutely foamed with rage.

As he was leaving the inn amid a hail of curses from his infamous friends, an impulse of genuine pity prompted me to follow him, that I might beg his forgiveness and seek in some way to pacify him, a task all the more difficult since he was especially bitter against me as the latest of his enemies, and the one who had so deeply deceived his eager hope of hearing the genuine Lablache.  Nevertheless, I succeeded in stopping him on the threshold; and now the riotous company silently entered into an extraordinary conspiracy to induce Lauermann to sing again that very evening.  How they managed this I can as little remember as I can call to mind the effect of the spirituous liquors I imbibed.  In any case, I suspect that drink must eventually have been the means of subduing Lauermann, just as it also rendered my own recollections of the wonderful events of that prolonged evening at the inn extremely vague.  After Lauermann had for the second time suffered the same mockery, the whole company felt itself bound to accompany the unhappy man to his home.  They carried him thither in a wheelbarrow, which they found outside the house, and in this he arrived, in triumph, at his own door, in one of those marvellous narrow alleys peculiar to the old city.  Frau Lauermann, who was aroused from slumber to receive her husband, enabled us, by her torrent of curses, to form some idea of the nature of their marital and domestic relations.  Mockery of her husband’s vocal talents was with her also a familiar theme; but to this she now added the most dreadful reproaches for the worthless scamps who, by encouraging him in this delusion, kept him from profitably following his trade, and even led him to such scenes as the present one.  Thereupon the pride of the suffering mastersinger reasserted itself; for while his wife painfully assisted him to mount the stairs, he harshly denied her right to sit in judgment upon his vocal gifts, and sternly ordered her to be silent.  But even now this wonderful night-adventure was by no means over.  The entire swarm moved once more in the direction of the inn.  Before the house, however, we found a number of fellows congregated, among them several workmen, against whom, owing to police regulations as to closing hours, the doors were shut.  But the regular guests of the house, who