fashion.  Your proboscis is a proboscis of sapience; you have kicked like a learned shrew-mouse; but if you are a true shrew-mouse, you should have in I know not what part of your ear—­I know not what special auditorial channel, which I know not, what wonderful door, closes I know not how, and I know not with what movements, by your secret commands to give you, I know not why, licence not to listen to I know not what things, which would be displeasing to you, on account of the special and peculiar perfection of your faculty of hearing everything, which would often pain you.”

“‘True,’ said the shrew-mouse, ’the door has just fallen.  I hear nothing!’

“‘Ah, I see,’ said the old rogue.

“And he made for the pile of corn, from which he commenced to take his store for the winter.

“‘Did you hear anything?’ asked he.

“‘I hear the pit-a-pat of my heart.’

“‘Kouick!’ cried all the mice; ‘we shall be able to hoodwink him.’

“The shrew-mouse, fancying that he had met with a faithful vassal, opened the trap of his musical orifice, and heard the noise of the grain going towards the hole.  Then, without having recourse to forfeiture, the justice of commissaries, he sprang upon the old mouse and squeezed him to death.  Glorious death! for the hero died in the thick of the grain, and was canonised as a martyr.  The shrew-mouse took him by the ears and placed him on the door the granary, after the fashion of the Ottoman Porte, where my good Panurge was within an ace of being spitted.  At the cries of the dying wretch the rats, mice, and others made for their holes in great haste.  When the night had fallen they came to the cellar, convoked for the purpose of holding a council to consider public affairs; to which meeting, in virtue of the Papyrian and other laws, their lawful wives were admitted.  The rats wished to pass before the mice, and serious quarrels about precedence nearly spoiled everything; but a big rat gave his arm to a mouse, and the gaffer rats and gammer mice being paired off in the same way, all were soon seated on their rumps, tails in air, muzzles stretched, whiskers stiff, and their eyes brilliant as those of a falcon.  Then commenced a deliberation, which finished up with insults and a confusion worthy of an ecumenical council of holy fathers.  One said this and another said that, and a cat passing by took fright and ran away, hearing these strange noises:  ’Bou, bou, grou, ou, ou, houic, houic, briff, briffnac, nac, nac, fouix, fouix, trr, trr, trr, trr, za, za, zaaa, brr, brr, raaa, ra, ra, ra, fouix!’ so well blended together in a babel of sound, that a council at the Hotel de Ville could not have made a greater hubbub.  During this tempest a little mouse, who was not old enough to enter parliament, thrust through a chink her inquiring snout, the hair on which was as downy as that of all mice, too downy to be caught.  As the tumult increased, by degrees her body followed her nose, until she came