ghosts: I die more innocent than thousands of tyrants and blasphemers, to whom ye yet appear not, but to unpolluted me.” Here I heard a sort of laugh, either on the street or in the side-room: at this warm human tone, I suddenly bloomed up again, as at the coming of a new Spring, in every twig and leaf. Wholly despising the winged coverlid, which was not now to be picked from the door, I laid myself down uncovered, but warm and perspiring from other causes, and soon fell asleep. For the rest, I am not the least ashamed, in the face of all refined capital cities, though they were standing here at my hand, that by this Devil-belief and Devil-address I have attained some likeness to our great German Lion, to Luther.
Second Day in Flatz.
Early in the morning, I felt myself awakened by the well-known coverlid; it had laid itself on me like a nightmare: I gaped up; quiet, in a corner of the room, sat a red, round, blooming, decorated girl, like a full-blown tulip in the freshness of life, and gently rustling with gay ribbons as with leaves.
“Who’s there how came you in?” cried I, half-blind. “I covered thee softly, and thought to let thee sleep,” said Bergelchen; “I have walked all night to be here early; do but look!”
She showed me her boots, the only remnant of her travelling-gear, which, in the moulting process of the toilette, she had not stript at the gate of Flatz.
“Is there,” said I, alarmed at her coming six hours sooner, and the more, as I had been alarmed all night, and was still so, at her mysterious entrance, “is there some fresh woe come over us, fire, murder, robbery?”
She answered: “The old Rat thou hast chased so long died yesterday; farther, there was nothing of importance.”
————————79. Weak and wrong heads are the hardest to change; and their inward man acquires a scanty covering: thus capons never moult.
89. In times of misfortune, the Ancients supported themselves with Philosophy or Christianity; the moderns again (for example, in the reign of Terror), take to Pleasure; as the wounded Buffalo, for bandage and salve, rolls himself in the mire.
