Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/107

 and Coin Regalities—to descry through the window of his auditorium a quitrent hen suspended, like Ignatius Loyola in prayer, or Juno in her punishment, in middle-air. He followed the incomprehensible direct ascension of the aeronautic animal, and at last descried at the upper window the attracting artist, and animal-magnetizer, who had drawn his lot for dinner from the hen-yard below. Contrary to all expectation, he terminated this fowling sport sooner than his Lecture on Regalities.

Fixlein walked home, amid the vesperal melodies of the steeple sounding-holes; and by the road courteously took off his hat before the empty windows of the Castle. Houses of quality were to him like persons of quality, as in India the Pagoda at once represents the temple and the god. To the mother he brought feigned compliments, which she repaid with authentic ones; for this afternoon she had been over, with her historical tongue and nature-interrogating eye, visiting the white-muslin Thiennette. The mother was wont to show her every spare-penny which he dropped into her large empty purse, and so raise him in the good graces of the Fraülein; for women feel their hearts much more attracted towards a son, who tenderly reserves for a mother some of their benefits, than we do to a daughter anxiously caring for her father; perhaps from a hundred causes, and this among the rest, that in their experience of sons and husbands they are more used to find these persons mere six-feet thunder-clouds, forked waterspouts, or even reposing tornadoes.

Blessed Quintus! on whose Life this other distinction, like an order of nobility, does also shine, that thou canst tell it over to thy mother; as, for example, this past afternoon in the parsonage. Thy joy flows into another heart, and streams back from it, redoubled, into thy own. There