Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/108

 is a closer approximating of hearts, and also of sounds, than that of the Echo; the highest approximation melts Tone and Echo into Resonance together.

It is historically certain that both of them supped this evening; and that instead of the whole dinner fragments which to-morrow might themselves represent a dinner, nothing but the cake-offering or pudding was laid upon the altar of the table. The mother, who for her own child would willingly have neglected not herself only, but all other people, now made a motion that to the Quintaner, who was sporting out of doors and baiting a bird instead of himself, there should no crumb of the precious pastry be given, but only table-bread without the crust. But the Schoolman had a Christian disposition, and said that it was Sunday, and the young man liked something delicate to eat as well as he. Fixlein—the counterpart of great men and geniuses—was inclined to treat, to gift, to gratify a serving housemate, rather than a man who is for the first time passing through the gate, and at the next post-stage will forget both his hospitable landlord and the last postmaster. On the whole, our Quintus had a touch of honor in him, and notwithstanding his thrift and sacred regard for money, he willingly gave it away in cases of honor, and unwillingly in cases of overpowering sympathy, which too painfully filled the cavities of his heart, and emptied those of his purse. Whilst the Quintaner was exercising the jus compascui on the cake, and six arms were peacefully resting on Thiennette's free-table, Fixlein read to himself and the company the Flachsenfingen Address-calendar; any higher thing, except Meusel's Gelehrtes Deutschland, he could not figure; the Kam-