Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/188

 felt myself excited and exalted; I fancied Republics, in which I, as a hero, might be at home; I longed to be in that noble Grecian time, when one hero readily put up with bastinadoes from another, and said: "Strike, but hear!" and out of this ignoble one, where men will scarcely put up with hard words, to say nothing of more. I painted out to my mind how I should feel, if, in happier circumstances, I were uprooting hollow Thrones, and before whole nations mounting on mighty deeds as on the Temple-steps of Immortality; and in gigantic ages, finding quite other men to outman and outstrip, than the mite-populace about me, or, at the best, here and there a Vulcanello. I thought and thought, and grew wilder and wilder, and intoxicated myself (no Pontac intoxication therefore, which, you know, increases more by continuance than cessation of drinking), and gesticulated openly, as I put the question to myself: "Wilt thou be a mere state-lapdog? A dog's-dog, a pium desiderium of an impium desiderium, an Ex-Ex, a Nothings-Nothing?—Fire and Fury!" With this, however, I dashed down my hat into the mud of the market. On lifting and cleaning this old servant, I could not but perceive how worn and faded it was; and I therefore determined instantly to purchase a new one, and carry the same home in my hand.

I accomplished this; I bought one of the finest cut. Strangely enough, by this hat, as if it had been a graduation-hat, was my head tried and examined, in the Ziegengasse or Goat-gate of Flätz. For as General Schabacker came driving along that street in his carriage, and I (it need not be said) was determined to avenge myself, not by vulgar clownishness, but by courtesy, I had here got one of the most ticklish problems imaginable to solve on the spur of the instant.