Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/116

 not but fall in with Hostiensis, who shows that the priestly dignity is seven thousand six hundred and forty-four times greater than the kingly, the Sun being just so many times greater than the Moon. But a Rittmeisterinn—she shrinks into absolute nothing before a parson.

In the servants' hall he applied to the lackeys for the last annual series of the Hamburg Political Journal; perceiving that with these historical documents of the time they were scandalously papering the buttons of travelling raiment. In gloomy harvest evenings, he could now sit down and read for himself what good news were transpiring in the political world—twelve months ago.

On a Triumphal Car, full-laden with laurel, and to which Hopes alone were yoked, he drove home at night, and by the road advised the Quintaner not to be puffed up with any earthly honor, but silently to thank God, as himself was now doing.

The thickset blooming grove of his four canicular weeks, and the flying tumult of blossoms therein, are already painted on three of the sides. I will now clutch blindfold into his days, and bring out one of them; one smiles and sends forth its perfumes like another.

Let us take, for instance, the Saint's day of his mother, Clara, the twelfth of August. In the morning, he had perennial, fire-proof joys, that is to say. Employments. For he was writing, as I am doing. Truly, if Xerxes proposed a prize for the invention of a new pleasure, any man who had sat down to write his thoughts on the prize-question had the new pleasure already among his fingers. I know only one thing sweeter than making a book, and that is, to project one. Fixlein used to write little works, of the twelfth part of an alphabet in size, which in their