day, simply because my little godson was for going over to Christianity, there was a vast racket made; every time a conversion happens, especially of nations, there is an uproaring and a shooting; I refer to the two Thirty Years' Wars, to the more recent one, and to the earlier, which Charlemagne so long carried on with the heathen Saxons; thus, in the Palais Royal, the Sun, at his transit over the meridian, fires off a cannon.[1] But this morning the little Unchristian, my godson, was precisely the person least attended to; for, in thinking of the conversion, they had no time left to think of the convert. Therefore I strolled about with him myself half the forenoon; and in our walk, hastily conferred on him a private baptism; having named him Jean Paul before the priest did so. At midday, we sent the beef away as it had come; the Sun of happiness having desiccated all our gastric juices. We now began to look about us for pomp; I for scientific decorations of my hair, my godson for his christening-shirt, and his mother for her dress-cap. Yet before the child's-rattle of the christening-bell had been jingled, I and the midwife, in front of the mother's bed, instituted Physiognomical Travels on the countenance of the small Unchristian, and returned with the discovery, that some features had been embossed by the pattern of the mother, and many firm portions resembled me; a double similarity, in which my readers can take little interest. Jean Paul looks very sensible for his years, or rather for his minutes, for it is the small one I am speaking of.——
But now I would ask, what German writer durst take
- ↑ This pygmy piece of ordnance, with its cunningly devised burning-glass, is still to be seen on the south side of the Paris Vanity-Fair; and in fine weather, to be heard, on all sides thereof, proclaiming the conversion (so it seems to Richter) of the Day from Forenoon to Afternoon.—Ed.
