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78 the giants were found. Two tall knaves lay at ease on a bench, who jumped up and assumed the attitude of giants when I appeared. They were really not so large as their sign boasted, but only two overgrown rascals, clad in rose-coloured tricot, who had very black, and perhaps false, side-whiskers, and who swung immense but hollow wooden clubs over their heads. When I asked after the dwarf, who was also set forth on the sign, they replied that for four weeks he had been unable on account of increasing illness to appear in public, but that I might see him if I would pay an extra price of admission. How willingly one pays double to see an old friend! Alas! it was a friend whom I found on his deathbed.! This deathbed was really a child's cradle, and in it lay the poor dwarf, with his sallow, wrinkled old man's face. A little girl of perhaps four years sat by him, rocking the cradle with her foot, and singing in a comical babbling tone—

"As the little man saw me he opened his glazed blue eyes as wide as possible, and a melancholy smile twitched about his white lips; he seemed to recognise me at once, for he reached out his dried, withered little hand, and gasped softly, 'Old friend!'