The poor giant, humiliated and overcome, left the town, it is said, and sought refuge in the mountains, where he died of shame.
The people were thus beginning to have a very humble opinion of giants, when a rumor was spread that they had entered the service of the dwarfs; not of court dwarfs, but of little dwarfs, who are so small that, by their size, the others appear as giants.
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These little dwarfs appear in the popular tales of Germany, under different names, as Wichtelman-ner, Metallarii, or Homunculi, and evidently, at one time, were found in great numbers throughout all the mountainous parts of the North. In Bretagne they were also known as Couribes, Parulpiquets or Cornicouets, but as they are ugly and evil disposed, I presume they are not of the same race with our good little dwarfs. These latter appear in the evening at the foot of large oak trees, or in old ruins, where they come by the thousand out of every crack and crevice and gambol and frolic, but vanish at the smallest noise.
