Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/254

 instead of martyr-crowns, would clap such memory-bonnets on their heads!"—Thereupon, till the roasting and cooking within doors were over, we marched out alone over the parsonage meadows, and talked of learned matters, we packed ourselves into the ruined Robber-Castle, on which my gossip, as already mentioned, has a literary work in hand. I deeply approved, the rather as this Kidnapper-tower had once belonged to an Aufhammer, his intention of dedicating the description to the Rittmeister; that nobleman, I think, will sooner give his name to the Book than to the Shock. For the rest, I exhorted my fellow-craftsman to pluck up literary heart, and said to him: "A fearless pen, good gossip! Let Subrector Hans von Füchslein be, if he like, the Dragon of the Apocalypse, lying in wait for the delivery of the fugitive Woman, to swallow the offspring; I am there too, and have my friend the Editor of the Litteraturzeitung at my side, who will gladly permit me to give an anticritique on paying the insertion-dues!"—I especially excited him to new fillings and return-freights of his Letter-Boxes. I have not taken oath that into this biographical chest-of-drawers I will not in the course of time introduce another Box. "Neither to my godson, worthy gossip, will it do any harm that he is presented, poor child, even now to the reading public, when he does not count more months than, as Horace will have it, a literary child should count years, namely, nine."

In walking homewards, I praised his wife. "If marriage," said I to him, "is the madder which in maids, as in cotton, makes the colors visible, then I contend, that Thiennette, when a maid, could scarcely be so good as she is now when a wife. By Heaven! in such a marriage, I should write Books of quite another sort, divine