Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 2.djvu/73

 from Haller’s large Physiology, that a postponement of the above operation will precipitate devilish stoneware, and at last precipitate the proprietor himself; this stone-manufactory being generally concluded, not by the Lithotomist, but by Death. Had postillions read that Tycho Brahe died like a bombshell by bursting, they would rather pull up for a moment; with such unlooked-for knowledge, they would see it to be reasonable that a man, though expecting some time to carry his death-stone on him, should not incline, for the time being, to carry it in him. Nay, have I not often, at Weimar, in the longest concluding scenes of Schiller, run out with tears in my eyes; purely that, while his Minerva was melting me on the whole, I might not by the Gorgon’s head on her breast be partially turned to stone? And did I not return to the weeping playhouse, and fall into the general emotion so much the more briskly, as now I had nothing to give vent to but my heart?

Deep in the dark we arrived at Niederschöna.

While I am standing at the Posthouse musing, with my eye fixed on my portmanteau, comes a beast of a watchman, and bellows and brays in his night-tube so close by my ear, that I start back in trepidation, I whom even a too hasty accosting will vex. Is there no medical police, then, against such efflated hour-fulminators and alarm-cannon, by which notwithstanding no gunpowder cannon are saved? In my opinion, nobody should be invested with the watchman-horn but some reasonable man, who had already blown himself into an asthma, and who would consequently be in case to sing out his hour-verse so low, that you could not hear it.

What I had long expected, and the Dwarf predicted, now took place: deeply stooping, through the high Posthouse door, issued the Giant, and raised, in the open air, a most unreasonably high figure, heightened by the ell-long bonnet and feather