Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 2.djvu/122

114 finities exist between our dross and our silver veins; as, for example, here between Pride and Love: and I could wish that we would pardon this hypostatic union in all persons, as readily as we do it in the fair, who, with all their faults, are nevertheless by us,—as, according to Du Fay, iron, though mixed with any other metal, is, by the magnet,—attracted and held fast.

Supposing even that the Devil had, in some idle minute, sown a handful or two of the seeds of Envy in our Quintus’ soul, yet they had not sprouted; and today especially they did not, when he heard the praises of a man who had been his teacher, and who,—what he reckoned a Titulado of the Earth, not from vanity but from piety,—was a clergyman. So much, however, is, according to History, not to be denied: That he now straightway came forth with his petition to the noble lady, signifying that “indeed he would cheerfully content himself for a few years in the school; but yet in the end he longed to be in some small quiet priestly office.” To her question, “But was he orthodox?” he answered, that “he hoped so; he had in Leipzig, not only attended all the public lectures of Dr. Burscher but also had taken private instructions from several sound teachers of the faith, well knowing that the Consistorium, in its examinations as to purity of doctrine, was now more strict than formerly.”

The sick lady required him to make a proof-shot, namely, to administer to her a sick-bed exhortation. By Heaven! he administered to her one of the best. Her pride of birth now crouched before his pride of office and priesthood; for though he could not, with the Dominican monk, Alanus de Rupe, believe that a priest was greater than God, inasmuch as the latter could only make a World, but the former a God (in the mass); yet he could not but fall-in with Hostiensis, who shows that the priestly dignity is seven thousand six hundred and forty-four times greater than the kingly, the Sun being just so many times greater than the Moon.—But a Rittmeisterinn—she shrinks into absolute nothing before a parson.

In the servants’ hall he applied to the lackeys for the last annual series of the Hamburg Political Journal; perceiving, that with these historical documents of the time, they were scandalously papering the buttons of travelling raiment. In