Her meaning here was good, and I could not take it ill: to you also, my Friends, her wealth and her open-heartedness are nothing new.
Melted into sensibility, I said: “Now, Berga, if there be a reunion appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or in Flatz; and I hope in God, the latter.” With these words, we whirled stoutly away. I looked round through the back-window of the coach at my good little village of Neusattel, and it seemed to me, in my melting mood, as if its steeples were rising aloft like an epitaphium over my life, or over my body, perhaps to return a lifeless corpse. “How will it all be,” thought I, “when thou at last, after two or three days, comest back?” And now I noticed my Bergelchen looking after us from the garret-window. I leaned far out from the coach-door, and her falcon eye instantly distinguished my head; kiss on kiss she threw with both hands after the carriage, as it rolled down into the valley. “Thou true-hearted wife,” thought I, “how is thy lowly birth, by thy spiritual new-birth, made forgettable, nay remarkable!’
I must confess, the assemblage and conversational picnic of the stage-coach was much less to my taste: the whole of them suspicious, unknown rabble, whom (as markets usually do) the Flatz cattle-market was alluring by its scent. I dislike becoming acquainted with strangers: not so my brother-in-law, the Dragoon; who now, as he always does, had in a few minutes elbowed himself into close quarters with the whole ragamuffin posse of them. Beside me sat a person who, in all human probability, was a Harlot; on her breast, a Dwarf intending to exhibit himself at the Fair; on the other side was a Ratcatcher gazing at me; and a Blind Passenger,[1] in a red mantle, had joined us down in the valley. No one of them, except my brother-in-law, pleased me. That rascals among these people————————32. Our Age (by some called the Paper Age, as if it were made from the rags of some better-dressed one) is improving in so far, as it now tears its rags rather into Bandages than into Papers; although, or because, the Rag-hacker (the Devil as they call it) will not altogether be at rest. Meanwhile, if Learned Heads transform themselves into Books, Crowned Heads
- ↑ ‘Live Passenger,’ ‘Nip;’ a passenger taken up only by Jarvie’s authority, and for Jarvie’s profit. ED.
