Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/140

 venomous juices into still feller consistency. The Quintus, in his simplicity, took Füchslein's contempt for envy of his pedagogic talents.

A Catherinenhof, an Annenliof, an Elizabethhof, Stralenhof, and Petershof, all these Russian pleasure palaces, a man can dispense with (if not despise), who has a room, in which on Christmas eve he walks about with a Presentation in his hand. The new Conrector now longed for nothing but—daylight; joys always (cares never) nibbled from him, like sparrows, his sleep-grains; and to-night, moreover, the registrator of his glad time, the clock-ape, drummed out every hour to him, which, accordingly, he spent in gay dreaming, rather than in sound snoring.

On Christmas morn he looked at his Class-prodromus, and thought but little of it; he scarcely knew what to make of his last night's foolish inflation about his Quintusship. "The Quintus-post," said he to himself, "is not to be named in the same day with the Conrectorate; I wonder how I could parade so last night before my promotion; at present, I had more reason." To-day he eat, as on all Sundays and holidays, with the Master-Butcher Steinberger, his former Guardian. To this man Fixlein was, what common people are always, but polished, philosophical, and sentimental people very seldom are,—thankful; a man thanks you the less for presents, the more inclined he is to give presents of his own; and the beneficent is rarely a grateful person. Meister Steinberger, in the character of storemaster, had introduced into the wirecage of a garret, where Fixlein, while a Student at Leipzig, was suspended, many a well-filled trough with good canary-meat, of hung-beef, of household bread, and Sauerkraut. Money indeed was never to be wrung from him;