Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 2.djvu/75

Rh As more than one person now felt inclined to sleep, but I, on the contrary, as was proper, to wake, I freely offered my seat of honour, the front place in the coach (meaning thereby to abolish many little flaws of envy in my fellow-passengers), to such persons as wished to take a nap thereon. The Legations-man accepted the offer with eagerness, and soon fell asleep there sitting, under the Titan. To me this sort of coach-sleeping of a diplomatic charge” d’affaires remained a thing incomprehensible. A man that, in the middle of a stranger and often barbarously-minded company, permits himself to slumber, may easily, supposing him to talk in his sleep and coach (think of the Saxon minister before the Seven-Years War!), blab out a thousand secrets, and crimes, some of which, perhaps, he has not committed. Should not every minister, ambassador, or other man of honour and rank, really shudder at the thought of insanity or violent fevers; seeing no mortal can be his surety that he shall not in such cases publish the greatest scandals, of which, it may be, the half are lies?

At last, after the long July night, we passengers, together with Aurora, arrived in the precincts of Flatz. I looked with a sharp yet moistened eye at the steeples: I believe, every man who has anything decisive to seek in a town, and to whom it is either to be a judgment-seat of his hopes, or their anchoring-station, either a battle-field or a sugar-field, first and longest directs his eye on the steeples of the town, as upon the indexes and balance-tongues of his future destiny; these artificial peaks, which, like natural ones, are the thrones of our Future. As I happened to express myself on this point perhaps too poetically to Jean Pierre, he answered, with sufficient want of taste: “The steeples of such towns are indeed the Swiss Alpine peaks, on which we milk and manufacture the Swiss cheese of our Future.” Did the Legations-Peter mean with this style to make me ridiculous, or only himself? Determine!