 He made them perform their very best feats in the taverns, under the village lindens, and at the fairs.  But the children who gazed at the four-footed artists, though they never failed to give hearty applause, frequently paid in no other coin.  He would gladly have helped the unfortunate woman, but to maintain the wretched mother and her twins imposed too heavy a burden upon the kind-hearted vagabond, and he had withdrawn his aid.