Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/109

 merherrs and Raths of the Calendar went tickling over his tongue like the raisins of the cake; and of the more rich church-livings he, by reading, as it were levied a tithe.

He purposely remained his own Edition in Sunday Wove-paper; I mean, he did not lay away his Sunday coat, even when the Prayer-bell tolled; for he had still much to do.

After supper he was just about visiting the Fräulein, when he descried her in person, like a lily dipped in the red twilight, in the Castle garden, whose western limit his house constituted, the southern one being the Chinese wall of the Castle …. By the way, how I got to the knowledge of all this, what Letter-boxes are, whether I myself was ever there, &c., &c.—the whole of this shall, upon my life, be soon and faithfully communicated to the reader, and that too in the present Book.

Fixlein hopped forth like a Will-o'-wisp into the garden, whose flower-perfume was mingling with his supper-perfume. No one bowed lower to a nobleman than he, not out of plebeian servility, nor of self-interested cringing, but because he thought "a nobleman was a nobleman." But in this case his bow, instead of falling forwards, fell obliquely to the right, as it were after his hat; for he had not risked taking a stick with him; and hat and stick were his proppage and balance-wheel, in short, his bowing-gear, without which it was out of his power to produce any courtly bow, had you offered him the High Church of Hamburg for so doing. Thiennette's mirthfulness soon unfolded his crumpled soul into straight form, and into the proper tone. He delivered her a long, neat Thanksgiving and Harvest sermon for the scaly cake; which appeared to her at once kind and tedious. Young women without