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 highest tree-top, and that I stretched out my arms to reach it, singing:

I must have kept on climbing for the greater part of the night, and from what they tell me I sang for hours, all sorts of songs, sacred and profane, some edifying and some very much the reverse; I also played on the dulcimer as well as on the drum and trumpet, till at last all the neighborhood came out to listen and to say, "Poor old Colas, he is dying, and mad as mad can be."

The next morning the sun was out of his bed long before I was, for I never opened my eyes till near midday, and my first thought was, "Good, here I am still living!"—not but what my couch was hard enough, and I still had those horrible pains in the gizzard, but I was glad enough that my body was there to put a pain in. "Breugnon, old man," said I, "it is a pleasure to see you; if you had died last night, I should never have got over it. Good-morning, dear garden, and everything in you!"

And while I was gloating on my beautiful melons, I heard some one hailing me from the