by the way, thou singular man! A whiff or two of ill-luck we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar. And for thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to her brother, "I leave my Attel on thy soul: thou well knowest, thou wild fly, what I will do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in the lurch." 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 Flätz; 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 Flätz cattle-market was alluring by its scent. I dislike becoming acquainted with strangers: not so my brother-in-
38. Epictetus advises us to travel, because our old acquaintances, by the influence of shame, impede our transition to higher virtues; as a bashful man will rather lay aside his provincial accent in some foreign quarter, and then return wholly purified to his own countrymen: in our days, people of rank and virtue follow this advice, but inversely; and travel because their old acquaintances, by the influence of shame, would too much deter them from new sins.
