Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/183

 the leaf whereon he is mining as a park-garden, as a fifth Quarter of the World (so near and rich is it); the leaf-pores as so many Valleys of Tempe, the leaf-skeleton as a Liberty-tree, a Bread-tree, and Life-tree, and the dew-drops as the Ocean. "We poor day-moths, evening-moths, and night-moths fall universally into the same error, only on different leaves; and whosoever (as I do) laughs at the important, airs with which the schoolmaster issues his programmes, the dramaturgist his playbills, the classical variation-alms-gatherer his alphabetic letters,—does it, if he is wise (as is the case here), with the consciousness of his own similar folly; and laughs, in regard to his neighbor, at nothing but mankind and himself.

The mother was not to be detained; she must off, this very night, to Hukelum, to give the Fräulein Thiennette at least some tidings of -this glorious business. —

And now the World will bet a hundred to one, that I forthwith take biographical wax, and emboss such a wax-figure cabinet of the Actus itself as shall be single of its kind.

But on Wednesday morning, while the hope-intoxicated Conrector was just about putting on his fine raiment, something knocked.——

It was the well-known servant of the Rittmeister, carrying the Hukelum Presentation for the Subrector Füchslein in his pocket. To the last-named gentleman he had been sent with this call to the parsonage; but he had distinguished ill betwixt Sub and Conrector; and had besides his own good reasons for directing his steps to the latter; for he thought, "Who can it be that gets it, but the parson that preached last Sunday, and that comes from the village, and is engaged to our Fräulein Thiennette, and to whom I brought a clock and a roll of ducats already?"