THIRD LETTER-BOX.
Christmas Recollections.--New Occurrence.
For all of us the pa.s.sage to the grave is, alas! a string of empty, insipid days, as of gla.s.s pearls, only here and there divided by an orient one of price. But you die murmuring, unless, like the Quintus, you regard your existence as a drum; this has only one single _tone_, but variety of _time_ gives the sound of it cheerfulness enough. Our Quintus taught in the Fourth Cla.s.s; vicariated in the Second; wrote at his desk by night; and so lived on the usual monotonous fashion--all the time from the Holidays--till Christmas eve, 1791; and nothing was remarkable in his history except this same eve, which I am now about to paint.
But I shall still have time to paint it, after, in the first place, explaining shortly how, like birds of pa.s.sage, he had contrived to soar away over the dim, cloudy Harvest. The secret was, he set upon the _Hamburg Political Journal_, with which the lackeys of Schadeck had been for papering their b.u.t.tons. He could now calmly, with his back at the stove, accompany the winter campaigns of the foregoing year; and fly after every battle, as the ravens did after that of Pharsalia. On the printed paper he could still, with joy and admiration, walk round our German triumphal arches and scaffoldings for fireworks; while to the people in the town, who got only the newest newspapers, the very fragments of these our trophies, maliciously torn down by the French, were scarcely discernible; nay, with old plans he could drive back and discomfit the enemy, while later readers in vain tried to resist them with new ones.
Moreover, not only did the facility of conquering the French prepossess him in favor of this journal; but also the circ.u.mstance that it--cost him nothing. His attachment to gratis reading was decided. And does not this throw light on the fact that he, as Morhof advised, was wont sedulously to collect the separate leaves of wastepaper books as they came from the grocer, and to rake among the same, as Virgil did in Ennius? Nay, for him the grocer was a Fortius (the scholar), or a Frederick (the king), both which persons were in the habit of simply cutting from complete books such leaves as contained anything. It was also this respect for all waste-paper that inspired him with such esteem for the ap.r.o.ns of French cooks, which it is well known consist of printed paper; and he often wished some German would translate these ap.r.o.ns; indeed, I am willing to believe that a good version of more than one of such paper ap.r.o.ns might contribute to elevate our Literature (this Muse _a belles fesses_), and serve her in place of drivel-bib.--On many things a man puts a _pretium affectionis_, simply because he hopes he may have half stolen them; on this principle, combined with the former, our Quintus adopted into his belief anything he could snap away from an open Lecture, or as a visitor in cla.s.s-rooms; opinions only for which the Professor must be paid, he rigorously examined.--I return to the Christmas eve.
At the very first, Egidius was glad, because out of doors millers and bakers were at fisticuffs (as we say of drifting snow in large flakes), and the ice-flowers of the window were blossoming; for external frost, with a snug warm room, was what he liked. He could now put fir wood into his stove, and Mocha coffee into his stomach; and shove his right foot (not into the slipper, but) under the warm side of his Shock, and also on the left keep swinging his pet Starling, which was pecking at the snout of old Schil; and then with the right hand--with the left he was holding his pipe--proceed, so undisturbed, so intrenched, so cloud-capt, without the smallest breath of frost, to the highest enterprise which a Quintus can attempt,--to writing the Cla.s.s-prodromus of the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium, namely, the eighth part thereof. I hold the _first printing_ in the history of a literary man to be more important than the _first printing_ in the history of Letters. Fixlein could not sate himself with specifying what he purposed, G.o.d willing, in the following year, to treat of; and accordingly, more for the sake of printing than of use, he further inserted three or four pedagogic glances at the plan of operations to be followed by his schoolmaster colleagues as a body.
He lastly introduced a few dashes, by way of hooking his thoughts together; and then laid aside the _Opus_, and would no longer look at it, that so, when printed, he might stand astonished at his own thoughts. And now he could take the Leipzig Fair Catalogue, which he purchased yearly, instead of the books therein, and open it without a sigh; he too was in print, as well as I am.
The happy fool, while writing, had shaken his head, rubbed his hands, hitched about on his chair, puckered his face, and sucked the end of his cue.--He could now spring up about five o"clock in the evening to recreate himself; and across the magic vapor of his pipe, like a new-caught bird, move up and down in his cage. On the warm smoke the long galaxy of street-lamps was gleaming; and red on his bed-curtains lay the fitful reflection of the blazing windows and illuminated trees in the neighborhood. And now he shook away the snow of Time from the winter-green of Memory; and beheld the fair years of his childhood, uncovered, fresh, green, and balmy, standing afar off before him. From his distance of twenty years, he looked into the quiet cottage of his parents, where his father and his brother had not yet been reaped away by the sickle of Death. He said to himself: "I will go through the whole Christmas eve, from the very dawn, as I had it of old."
At his very rising he finds spangles on the table; sacred spangles from the gold-leaf and silver-leaf with which the Christ-child[47] has been emblazoning and coating his apples and nuts, the presents of the night.--On the mint-balance of joy, this metallic foam pulls heavier than the golden cars, and golden Pythagoras-legs, and golden Philistine-mice of wealthier capitalists.--Then came his mother, bringing him both Christianity and clothes; for in drawing on his trousers, she easily recapitulated the Ten Commandments, and in tying his garters, the Apostles" Creed. So soon as candle-light was over, and daylight come, he clambers to the arm of the settle, and then measures the nocturnal growth of the yellow wiry grove of Christmas-Birch; and devotes far less attention than usual to the little white winter-flowerage, which the seeds shaken from the bird-cage are sending forth in the wet joints of the window-panes.--I nowise grudge J. J. Rousseau his _Flora Petrinsularis_;[48] but let him also allow our Quintus his _Window-flora_.--There was no such thing as school all day; so he had time enough to seek his Flescher (his brother), and commence (when could there be finer frost for it?) the slaughtering of their winter-meat. Some days before, the brother, at the peril of his life and of a cudgelling, had caught their stalled-beast--so they called the sparrow--under a window-sill in the Castle. Their slaughtering wants not an axe (of wood), nor puddings, nor potted meat.--About three o"clock the old Gardener, whom neighbors must call the Professor of Gardening, takes his place on his large chair, with his Cologne tobacco-pipe; and after this no mortal shall work a stroke. He tells nothing but lies; of the aeronautic Christ-child, and the jingling Ruprecht with his bells. In the dusk, our little Quintus takes an apple; divides it into all the figures of stereometry, and spreads the fragments in two heaps on the table; then as the lighted candle enters, he starts up in amazement at the unexpected present, and says to his brother, "Look what the good Christ-child has given thee and me; and I saw one of his wings glittering." And for this same glittering he himself lies in wait the whole evening.
About eight o"clock--here he walks chiefly by the chronicle of his letter-drawer--both of them, with necks almost excoriated with washing, and in clean linen, and in universal anxiety lest the Holy Christ-child find them up, are put to bed. What a magic night! What tumult of dreaming hopes!--The populous, motley, glittering cave of Fancy opens itself, in the length of the night, and in the exhaustion of dreamy effort, still darker and darker, fuller and more grotesque; but the awakening gives back to the thirsty heart its hopes. All accidental tones, the cries of animals, of watchmen, are, for the timidly devout Fancy, sounds out of Heaven; singing voices of Angels in the air, church-music of the morning worship.--
Ah! it was not the mere Lubberland of sweetmeats and playthings, which then, with its perspective, stormed like a river of joy against the chambers of our hearts; and which yet in the moonlight of memory, with its dusky landscapes, melts our souls in sweetness. Ah! this was it, that then for our boundless wishes there were still boundless hopes; but now reality is round us, and the wishes are all that we have left!
At last came rapid lights from the neighborhood playing through the window on the walls, and the Christmas trumpets, and the crowing from the steeple, hurries both the boys from their bed. With their clothes in their hands, without fear for the darkness, without feeling for the morning-frost, rushing, intoxicated, shouting, they hurry down-stairs into the dark room. Fancy riots in the pastry and fruit perfume of the still eclipsed treasures, and paints her air-castles by the glimmering of the Hesperides-fruit with which the Birch-tree is loaded. While their mother strikes a light, the falling sparks sportfully open and shroud the dainties on the table, and the many-colored grove on the wall; and a single atom of that fire bears on it a hanging garden of Eden.----
--On a sudden all grew light; and the Quintus got--the Conrectorship, and a table-clock.
FOURTH LETTER-BOX.
Office-brokage.--Discovery of the Promised Secret.--Hans von Fuchslein.
For while the Quintus, in his vapory chamber was thus running over the sounding-board of his early years, the Rathsdiener, or City-officer, entered with a lantern and the Presentation; and behind him the courier of the Frau von Aufhammer with a note and a table-clock. The Rittmeisterinn had transformed her payment for the Dog-days sick-bed exhortation into a Christmas present; which consisted, _first_, of a table-clock, with a wooden ape thereon, starting out when the hour struck, and drumming along with every stroke; _secondly_, of the Conrectorate, which she had procured for him.
As in the public this appointment from the private Flachsenfingen Council has not been judged of as it deserved, I consider it my duty to offer a defence for the body corporate; and that rather here than in the _Reichsanzeiger_, or _Imperial Indicator_.--I have already mentioned, in the Second Letter-Box, that the Town-Syndic drove a trade in Hamburg candles; and the then Burgermeister in coffee-beans, which he sold as well whole as ground. Their joint traffic, however, which they carried on exclusively, was in the eight School-offices of Flachsenfingen; the other members of the Council acting only as bale-wrappers, shopmen, and accountants in the Council wareroom. A Council-house, indeed, is like an India-house, where not only resolutions or appointments, but also shoes and cloth, are exposed to sale. Properly speaking, the Councillor derives his freedom of office-trading from that principle of the Roman law, _Cui jus est donandi, eidem et vendendi jus est_; that is to say, He who has the right of giving anything away has also a right to dispose of it for money, if he can. Now as the Council-members have palpably the right of conferring offices gratis, the right of selling them must follow of course.
_Short Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general_.
My chief anxiety is lest the Academy-product-sale-Commission[49] of the State carry on its office-trade too slackly. And what but the commonweal must suffer in the long run, if important posts are distributed, not according to the current cash which is laid down for them, but according to connections, relationships, party recommendations, and bowings and cringings? Is it not a contradiction, to charge t.i.tulary offices dearer than real ones? Should one not rather expect that the real Hofrath would pay higher by the _alterum tantum_ than the mere t.i.tulary Hofrath?--Money, among European nations, is now the equivalent and representative of value in all things, and consequently in understanding; the rather as a _head_ is stamped on it; to pay down the purchase-money of an office is therefore neither more nor less than to stand an _examen rigorosum_, which is held by a good _schema examinandi_. To invert this, to pretend exhibiting your qualifications, in place of these their surrogates, and a.s.signates, and _monnoie de confiance_, is simply to resemble the crazy philosophers in _Gulliver"s Travels_, who, for social converse, instead of names of things, brought the things themselves tied up in a bag; it is, indeed, plainly as much as trying to fall back into the barbarous times of trade by barter, when the Romans, instead of the figured cattle on their leather money, drove forth the beeves themselves.
From all such injudicious notions I myself am so far removed, that often, when I used to read that the King of France was devising new offices, to stand and sell them under the booth of his Baldaquin, I have set myself to do something of the like. This I shall now at least calmly propose; not vexing my heart whether Governments choose to adopt it or not. As our Sovereign will not allow us to multiply offices purely for sale, nay, on the contrary, is day and night (like managers of strolling companies) meditating how to give more parts to one State-actor; and thus to the Three Stage Unities to add a Fourth, that of Players; as the above French method, therefore, will not apply, could we not at least contrive to invent some Virtues harmonizing with the offices, along with which they might be sold as t.i.tles? Might we not, for instance, with the office of a Referendary, put off at the same time a t.i.tular Incorruptibility, for a fair consideration; and so that this virtue, as not belonging to the office, must be separately paid for by the candidate? Such a market-t.i.tle and patent of n.o.bility could not but be ornamental to a Referendary. We forget that in former times such high t.i.tles were appended to all posts whatsoever. The scholastic Professor then wrote himself (besides his official designation) "The Seraphic," "The Incontrovertible," "The Penetrating"; the King wrote himself, "The Great," "The Bald," "The Bold," and so also did the Rabbins. Could it be unpleasant to gentlemen in the higher stations of Justice, if the t.i.tles of Impartiality, Rapidity, &c., might be conferred on them by sale, as well as the posts themselves? Thus with the appointment of a Kammerrath, or Councillor of Revenue, the virtue of Patriotism might fitly be conjoined; and I believe few Advocates would grudge purchasing the t.i.tle of Integrity (as well as their common one of Government-advocacy), were it to be had in the market. If, however, any candidate chose to take his post without the virtues, then it would stand with himself to do so, and in the adoption of this reflex morality Government should not constrain him.
It might be that, as, according to Tristram Shandy, clothes, according to Walter Shandy and Lavater, proper names, exert an influence on men, appellatives would do so still more; since, on us, as on testaceous animals, _the foam so often hardens into sh.e.l.l_; but such internal morality is not a thing the State can have an eye to; for, as in the fine arts, it is not this, but the _representation_ of it, which forms her true aim.
I have found it rather difficult to devise for our different offices different verbal-virtues; but I should think there might many such divisions of Virtue (at this moment, Love of Freedom, Public-spirit, Sincerity, and Uprightness occur to me) be hunted out; were but some well-disposed minister of state to appoint a Virtue-board or Moral Address Department, with some half-dozen secretaries, who, for a small salary, might devise various virtues for the various posts. Were I in their place, I should hold a good prism before the white ray of Virtue, and divide it completely. Pity that it were not crimes we wanted--their subdivision I mean;--our country Judges might then be selected for this purpose. For in their tribunals, where only inferior jurisdiction, and no penalty above five florins Frankish, is admitted, they have a daily training how out of every mischief to make several small ones, none of which they ever punish to a greater amount than their five florins.
This is a precious moral _Rolfinkenism_, which our Jurists have learned from the great Sin-cutters, St. Augustin and his Sorbonne, who together have carved more sins on Adam"s Sin-apple than ever Rolfinken did faces on a cherry-stone. How different one of our Judges from a Papal Casuist, who, by side-sc.r.a.pings, will rasp you down the best deadly sin into a venial!--
School-offices (to come to these) are a small branch of traffic certainly; yet still they are monarchies,--school-monarchies, to wit,--resembling the Polish crown, which, according to Pope"s verse, is twice exposed to sale in the century; a statement, I need hardly say, arithmetically false, Newton having settled the average duration of a reign at twenty-two years. For the rest, whether the city Council bring the young of the community a Hamel"s _Rat_-and-Child-_catcher_; or a Weissen"s _Child"s-friend_,--this to the Council can make no difference; seeing the Schoolmaster is not a horse, for whose secret defects the horse-dealer is to be responsible. It is enough if Town-Syndic and Co. cannot reproach themselves with having picked out any fellow of genius; for a genius, as he is useless to the State, except for recreation and ornament, would at the very least exclude the duller, cooler head, who properly forms the true care and profit of the State; as your costly carat-pearl is good for show alone, but coa.r.s.e grain-pearls for medicine. On the whole, if a schoolmaster be adequate to flog his scholars, it should suffice; and I cannot but blame our Commission of Inspectors, when they go examining schools, that they do not make the schoolmaster go through the duty of firking one or two young persons of his cla.s.s in their presence, by way of trial, to see what is in him.
_End of the Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general_.
Now again to our history! The Councillor Heads of the Firm had conferred the Conrectorate on my hero, not only with a view to the continued consumpt of candles and beans, but also on the strength of a quite mad notion: they believed the Quintus would very soon die.
--And here I have reached a most important circ.u.mstance in this History, and one into which I have yet let no mortal look; now, however, it no longer depends on my will whether I shall shove aside the folding-screen from it or not; but I must positively lay it open, nay, hang a reverberating-lamp over it.
In medical history, it is a well-known fact, that in certain families the people all die precisely at the same age, just as in these families they are all born at the same age (of nine months); nay, from Voltaire, I recollect one family, the members of which at the same age all killed themselves. Now, in the Fixleinic lineage, it was the custom that the male ascendants uniformly on Cantata-Sunday, in their thirty-second year, took to bed and died; every one of my readers would do well to insert in his copy of the _Thirty Years" War_, Schiller having entirely omitted it, the fact, that, in the course thereof, one Fixlein died of the plague, another of hunger, another of a musket-bullet; all in their thirty-second year. True Philosophy explains the matter thus: "The first two or three times, it happened purely by accident; and the other times, the people died of sheer fright: if not so, the whole fact is rather to be questioned."
But what did Fixlein make of the affair? Little or nothing; the only thing he did was, that he took little or no pains to fall in love with Thiennette; that so no other might have cause for fear on his account.
He himself, however, for five reasons, minded it so little, that he hoped to be older than Senior Astmann before he died. First, because three Gypsies, in three different places, and at three different times, had each shown him the same long vista of years in her magic mirror.
Secondly, because he had a sound const.i.tution. Thirdly, because his own brother had formed an exception, and perished before the thirties.
Fourthly, on this ground: When a boy he had fallen sick of sorrow, on the very Cantata-Sunday when his father was lying in the winding-sheet, and only been saved from death by his playthings; and with this Cantata-sickness, he conceived that he had given the murderous Genius of his race the slip. Fifthly, the church-books being destroyed, and with them the certainty of his age, he could never fall into a right definite deadly fear: "It may be," said he, "that I have got whisked away over this wh.o.r.eson year, and no one the wiser." I will not deny that last year he had fancied he was two-and-thirty; "however," said he, "if I am not to be so till, G.o.d willing, the next (1792), it may run away as smoothly as the last; am I not always in _His_ keeping? And were it unjust if the pretty years that were broken off from the life of my brother should be added to mine?" Thus, under the cold snow of the Present, does poor man strive to warm himself, or to mould out of it a fair snow-man.
The Councillor Oligarchy, however, built upon the opposite opinion; and, like a Divinity, elevated our Quintus all at once from the Quintusship to the Conrectorate; swearing to themselves that he would soon vacate it again. Properly speaking, by school-seniority, this holy chair should have belonged to the Subrector Hans von Fuchslein; but he wished it not; being minded to become Hukelum Parson; especially, as Astmann"s Death-angel, according to sure intelligence, was opening more and more widely the door of this spiritual sheepfold. "If the fellow weather another year, "t is more than I expect," said Hans.
This Hans was such a churl, that it is pity he had not been a Hanoverian Post-boy; that so, by the Mandate of the Hanoverian Government, enjoining on all its Post-officers an elegant style of manners, he might have somewhat refined himself. To our poor Quintus, whom no mortal disliked, and who again could hate no mortal, he alone bore a grudge; simply because _Fixlein_ did not write himself _Fuchslein_, and had not chosen along with him to purchase a Patent of n.o.bility. The Subrector, on this his Patent triumphal chariot, drawn by a team of four specified ancestors, was obliged to see the Quintus, who was related to him, clutching by the lackey-straps behind the carriage; and to hear him, in the most despicable raiment, saying to the train: "He that rides there is my cousin, and a mortal, and I always remind him of it." The mild, compliant Quintus never noticed this large wasp-poison-bag in the Subrector, but took it for a honey-bag; nay, by his brotherly warmness, which the n.o.bleman regarded as mere show, he concreted these venomous juices into still feller consistency. The Quintus, in his simplicity, took Fuchslein"s contempt for envy of his pedagogic talents.
A Catherinenhof, an Annenhof, an Elizabethhof, Stralenhof, and Petershof, all these Russian pleasure palaces, a man can dispense with (if not despise), who has a room, in which on Christmas eve he walks about with a Presentation in his hand. The new Conrector now longed for nothing but--daylight; joys always (cares never) nibbled from him, like sparrows, his sleep-grains; and to-night, moreover, the registrator of his glad time, the clock-ape, drummed out every hour to him, which, accordingly, he spent in gay dreaming, rather than in sound snoring.
On Christmas morn he looked at his Cla.s.s-prodromus, and thought but little of it; he scarcely knew what to make of his last night"s foolish inflation about his Quintusship. "The Quintus-post," said he to himself, "is not to be named in the same day with the Conrectorate; I wonder how I could parade so last night before my promotion; at present, I had more reason." To-day he eat, as on all Sundays and holidays, with the Master-Butcher Steinberger, his former Guardian. To this man Fixlein was, what common people are _always_, but polished, philosophical, and sentimental people very _seldom_ are,--_thankful_; a man thanks you the less for presents, the more inclined he is to give presents of his own; and the beneficent is rarely a grateful person.
Meister Steinberger, in the character of storemaster, had introduced into the wire-cage of a garret, where Fixlein, while a Student at Leipzig, was suspended, many a well-filled trough with good canary-meat, of hung-beef, of household bread, and _Sauerkraut_. Money indeed was never to be wrung from him; it is well known that he often sent the best calf-skins gratis to the tanner, to be boots for our Quintus; but the tanning-charges the Ward himself had to bear.--On Fixlein"s entrance, as was at all times customary, a smaller damask table-cloth was laid upon the large coa.r.s.er one; the arm-chair, silver implements, and a wine-soup were handed him; mere waste, which, as the Guardian used to say, suited well enough for a Scholar; but for a Flescher not at all. Fixlein first took his victuals, and then signified that he was made Conrector. "Ward," said Steinberger, "if you are made that, it is well.--Seest thou, Eva, I cannot buy a tail of thy cows now; I must have smelt it beforehand." He was hereby informing his daughter that the cash set apart for the fatted cattle must now be applied to the Conrectorate; for he was in the habit of advancing all instalment-dues to his Ward, at an interest of four and a half per cent. Fifty gulden he had already lent the Quintus on his advancement to the Quintusship; of these the interest had to be duly paid; yet, on the day of payment, the Quintus always got some abatement; being wont every Sunday after dinner to instruct his guardian"s daughter in arithmetic, writing, and geography. Steinberger with justice required of his own grown-up daughter that she should know all the towns where he in his wanderings as a journeyman had slain fat oxen; and if she slipped, or wrote crookedly, or subtracted wrong, he himself, as Academical Senate and Justiciary, was standing behind her chair, ready, so to speak, with the forge-hammer of his fist to beat out the dross from her brain, and at a few strokes hammer it into right ductility.
The soft Quintus, for his part, had never struck her. On this account she had perhaps, with a few glances, appointed him executor and a.s.signee of her heart. The old Flescher--simply because his wife was dead--had constantly been in the habit of searching with mine-lamps and pokers into all the corners of Eva"s heart; and had in consequence long ago observed--what the Quintus never did--that she had a mind for the said Quintus. Young women conceal their sorrows more easily than their joys; to-day, at the mention of this Conrectorate, Eva had become unusually _red_.
When she went after breakfast to bring in coffee, which the Ward had to drink down to the grounds: "I beat Eva to death if she but look at him," said he. Then addressing Fixlein: "Hear you, Ward, did you never cast an eye on my Eva? She can suffer you, and if you want her, you get her; but _we_ have done with one another; for a learned man needs quite another sort of thing."
"Herr Regiments-Quartermaster," said Fixlein, (for this post Steinberger filled in the Provincial Militia,) "such a match were far too rich, at any rate, for a Schoolman." The Quartermaster nodded fifty times; and then said to Eva, as she returned,--at the same time taking down from the shelf a wooden crook, on which he used to rack out and suspend his slain calves: "Stop!--Hark, dost wish the present Herr Conrector here for thy husband?"
"Ah, good Heaven!" said Eva.
"Mayst wish him or not," continued the Flescher; "with this crook thy father knocks thy brains out, if thou but think of a learned man. Now make his coffee." And so by the dissevering stroke of this wooden crook was a love easily smitten asunder, which in a higher rank, by such cutting through it with the sword, would only have foamed and hissed the keenlier.
Fixlein might now, at any hour he liked, lay hold of fifty florins Frankish, and clutch the pedagogic sceptre, and become coadjutor of the Rector, that is, Conrector. We may a.s.sert, that it is with debts, as with proportions in Architecture; of which Wolf has shown that those are the best which can be expressed in the smallest numbers.
Nevertheless, the Quartermaster cheerfully took learned men under his arm; for the notion that his debtor would decease in his thirty-second year, and that so Death, as creditor in the first rank, must be paid his Debt of Nature, before the other creditors could come forward with their debts--this notion he named stuff and old-wifery; he was neither Superst.i.tious nor Fanatical, and he walked by firm principles of action, such as the common man much oftener has than your vaporing man of letters, or your empty, dainty man of rank.
As it is but a few clear Ladydays, warm Mayday-nights, at the most a few odorous Rose-weeks, which I am digging from this Fixleinic Life, embedded in the dross of week-day cares; and as if they were so many veins of silver, am separating, stamping, smelting, and burnishing for the reader,--I must now travel on with the stream, his history to Cantata-Sunday, 1792, before I can gather a few handfuls of this gold-dust, to carry in and wash in my biographical gold-hut. That Sunday, on the contrary, is very metalliferous; do but consider that Fixlein is yet uncertain (the ashes of the Church-books not being legible) whether it is conducting him into his thirty-second or his thirty-third year.
From Christmas till then he did nothing, but simply became Conrector.
The new chair of office was a Sun-altar, on which, from his Quintus-ashes, a young Ph[oe]nix combined itself together. Great changes--in offices, marriages, travels--make us younger; we always date our history from the last revolution, as the French have done from theirs. A colonel, who first set foot on the ladder of seniority as corporal, is five times younger than a king, who in his whole life has never been aught else except a--crown-prince.
FIFTH LETTER-BOX.