Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/149

 cut in pieces, though his large dressing-table had nothing to see itself in but a mere shaving-glass; he let the mirror he where it was for this reason: "Should I ever, God willing, get married," said he, "I shall then, towards morning, be able to look at my sleeping wife, without sitting up in bed."

As to the second article of the testament, the godchild Easter-pence, his mother had, last night, arranged it perfectly. The Lawyer took her evidence on the years of the heir; and these she had stated at exactly the teeth-number, two-and-thirty. She would willingly have lied, and passed off her son, like an Inscription, for older than he was; but against this venia ætatis, she saw too well the authorities would have taken exception, " that it was falsehood and cozenage; had the son been two-and-thirty, he must have been dead some time ago, as it could not but be presumed that he then was."

And just as she was recounting this, a servant from Schadeck called; and delivered to the Conrector, in return for a discharge and ratification of the birth-certificate given out by his mother, a gold bar of two-and-thirty ducat age-counters, like a helm-bar for the voyage of his life; Herr von Aufhammer was too proud to engage in any pettifogging discussion over a plebeian birth-certificate.

And thus, by a proud open-handedness, was one of the best lawsuits thrown to the dogs; seeing this gold bar might, in the wire-mill of the judgment-bench, have been drawn out into the finest threads. From such a tangled lock, which was not to be unravelled—for in the first place, there was no document to prove Fixlein's age; in the second place, so long as he lived, the necessary cohclusion was, that he was not yet thirty-two —from such a