Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/213

 whether his women took him or not, he informed them, in juristico-theological phrase: "That he would put off no longer, but write this very afternoon to the venerable Consistorium, in whose hands lay the jus circa sacra, for a new Ball to the church-steeple; and the rather, as he hoped before new-year's day to raise a bountiful subscription from the parish for this purpose. If God spare us till spring," added he, with peculiar cheerfulness, "and thou wert happily recovered, I might so arrange the whole that the ball should be set up at thy first church-going, dame!"

Thereupon he shifted his chair from the dinner and dessert table to the work-table; and spent the half of his afternoon over the petition for the steeple-ball. As there still remained a little space till dusk, he clapped his tackle to his new learned Opus, of which I must now afford a little glimpse. Out of doors among the snow, there stood near Hukelum an old Robber-Castle, which Fixlein, every day in Autumn, had hovered round like a revenant, with a view to gauge it, ichnographically to delineate it, to put every window-bar and every bridle-hook of it correctly on paper. He believed he was not expecting too much, if thereby—and by some drawings of the not so much vertical as horizontal walls—he hoped to impart to his "Architectural Correspondence of two Friends concerning the Hukelum Robber-Castle" that last polish and labor limæ which contents Reviewers. For towards the critical Star-chamber of the Reviewers he entertained not that contempt which some authors actually feel—or only affect, as, for instance, I. From this mouldered Robber-Louvre, there grew for him more flowers of joy than ever in all probability had grown from it of old for its owners.—To my knowledge, it is an anecdote not hitherto made