Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 2.djvu/94

86 on Sunday, when these high-prancing prideful dames look at me in church, and I grow scarlet for shame!”

Here in sympathetic woe I sprang out of bed to the dear soul, over whose brightly blooming cheeks warm tears were rolling, and cried: “Thou true heart, do not tear me in pieces so! May I die, if yet in these dog-days I become not all and everything that thou wishest! Speak, wilt thou be Mining-rathin, Build-rathin, Court-rathin, War-rathin, Chamber-rathin, Commerce -rathin, Legations -rathin, or Devil and his Dam’s rathin: I am here and will buy it, and be it. Tomorrow I send riding posts to Saxony and Hessia, to Prussia and Russia, to Friesland and Katzenellenbogen, and demand patents. Nay, I will carry matters farther than another, and be all things at once, Flachsenfingen Court-rath, Scheerau Excise-rath, Haar-haar Building-rath, Pestitz Chamber-rath (for we have the cash); and thus, alone and single-handed, represent with one podex and corpus a whole Rath-session of select Raths; and stand, a complete Legion of Honour, on one single pair of legs: the like no man ever did.”

“O! now thou art angel-good!” said she, and gladder tears rolled down; “thou shalt counsel me thyself which are the finest Raths, and these we will be.”

“No,” continued I, in the fire of the moment, “neither shall this serve us: to me it is not enough that to Mrs. Chaplain thou canst announce thyself as Building-rathin, to Mrs. Town-parson as Legations-rathin, to Mrs. Biirgermeister as Court-rathin, to Mrs. Road-and-toll-surveyor as Commerce-rathin, or how and where thou pleasest”

“Ah! my own too good Attelchen!” said she.

“But,” continued I, “I shall likewise become corresponding member of the several Learned Societies in the several best capital cities (among which I have only to choose); and truljf no common actual member, but a whole honorary member;