"Room! room for my ladders!" cried another voice; "the orders are that everything must be lighted at eight o'clock sharp, and that doesn't give me any too much time to light so many chandeliers. Room, room, I say!"
"Painters, take away your ladders," cried the upholsterers, in their turn; "we can do nothing as long as you are in the way."
"Such confusion, such an uproar, it's a second Tower of Babel," muttered the majordomo, wiping his brow. "I did all that I could to see that everything was done at the proper time; I warned everyone more than a hundred times; and here you are, all in a muddle, disputing the ground with one another, in one another's way, and making no progress at all. It is hopeless! it is disgusting!"
"Whose fault is it?" said the man with the flowers. "Can I put my wreaths on bare walls and my flowerpots on rough boards?"
"And can I climb up to the ceiling," said the man with the candles, "if my ladders are taken away to lay carpets? Do you take my men for bats, do you want me to make thirty honest fellows break their necks?"
"How do you expect my men to lay their carpets," said the chief upholsterer, in his turn, "if the painters don't take away their ladders?"
"And how do you expect our ladders to be taken away if we are still on them?" shouted one of the painters.
"The fault is all yours, you daubers!" cried the frantic majordomo; "or, rather, your master is the only culprit," he added, noticing that the young man whom he addressed glared fiercely at him at the epithet of dauber. "It's that old madman of a Pier-Angelo, who is not even here to direct you, I'll wager. Where can he be? At the nearest wineshop, I'll stake my head!"
A voice, still full and resonant, broke forth at the highest point of the ceiling with the refrain of an old ballad, and, on looking up, the wrathful majordomo saw the glistening bald head of the decorator-in-chief. Evidently the old man was laughing at the majordomo, and, being master of the field, proposed to put the finishing touches to his work at his leisure.
"Pier-Angelo, my friend," said the other, "you are making sport of us! That is too bad of you. You act like an old spoiled child, as you are; but we shall lose patience at last. This is no time to laugh and sing your drinking-songs."