not met with any spectral persons; though I knew that to her, a wild beast, a river, a half-abyss, are nothing. No, she had not; but the gay-dressed town's-people, she said, had scared her in the morning. O! how I do love these soft Harmonica-quiverings of female fright!
At last, however, I was forced to bite or cut the coloquinta-apple, and give her the half of it; I mean the news of my rejected petition for the Catechetical Professorship. Wishing to spare this joyful heart the rudeness of the whole truth, and to subtract something from a heavy burden, more fit for the shoulders of a man, I began: "Bergelchen, the Professorship affair is taking another, though still a good enough course: the General, whom may the Devil and his Grandmother teach sense, will not be taken except by storm; and storm he shall have, as certainly as I have on my nightcap."
"Then, thou art nothing yet?" inquired she.
"For the moment, indeed, not!" answered I.
"But before Saturday night?" said she.
"Not quite," said I.
"Then am I sore stricken, and could leap out of the window," said she, and turned away her rosy face, to hide its wet eyes, and was silent very long. Then, with painfully quivering voice, she began: "Good Christ stand by me at Neusattel on Sunday, when these high-prancing prideful dames look at me in church, and I grow scarlet for shame!"
Here in sympathetic woe I sprang out of bed to the dear soul, over whose brightly blooming cheeks warm tears were rolling, and cried: "Thou true heart, do not tear me in pieces so! May I die, if yet in these dog-days I become not all and everything that thou wishest! Speak, wilt thou be Mining-räthin, Build-räthin, Court-räthin, War-räthin,
63. To apprehend danger from the Education of the People, is like fearing lest the thunderbolt strike into the house because it has windows; whereas the lightning never comes through these, but through their lead framing, or down by the smoke of the chimney.
