Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 2.djvu/201

Rh The Investiture on Sunday (whose Gospel, of the good shepherd, suited well with the ceremony) I must dispatch in few words; because nothing truly sublime can bear to be treated of in many. However, I shall impart the most memorable circumstances, when I say that there was—drinking (in the Parsonage),—music-making (in the Choir),—reading (of the Presentation by the Senior, and of the Ratification-rescript by the lay Rath),—and preaching, by the Consistorialrath, who took the soul-curer by the hand, and presented, made over and guaranteed him to the congregation, and them to him. Fixlein felt that he was departing as a high-priest from the church, which he had entered as a country parson; and all day he had not once the heart to ban. When a man is treated with solemnity, he looks upon himself as a higher nature, and goes through his solemn feasts devoutly.

This indenturing, this monastic profession, our Head-Rabbis and Lodge-masters (our Superintendents) have usually a taste for putting off till once the pastor has been some years ministering among the people, to whom they hereby present him; as the early Christians frequently postponed their consecration and investiture to Christianity, their baptism namely, till the day when they died: nay, I do not even think this clerical Investiture would lose much of its usefulness, if it and the declaring-vacant of the office were reserved for the same day; the rather as this usefulness consists entirely in two items; what the Superintendent and his Raths can eat, and what they can pocket.

Not till towards evening did the Parson and I get acquainted. The Investiture officials, and elevation pulley-men, had, throughout the whole evening, been very violently—breathing. I mean thus: as these gentlemen could not but be aware, by the most ancient theories and the latest experiments, that air was nothing else than a sort of rarefied and exploded water, it became easy for them to infer that, conversely, water was nothing else than a denser sort of air. Wine-drinking, therefore, is nothing else but the breathing of an air pressed together into proper spissitude, and sprinkled over with a few perfumes. Now, in our days, by clerical persons too much (fluid) breath can never be inhaled through the mouth; seeing the dignity of their station excludes them from that breathing through the smaller pores, which Aber- Rh