CHAPTER VIII.
“ALL is quiet, thank Heaven! the Captain is as fast as a church,” thought Madame Doppeldick, as she stood in nocturnal dishabille, on the little landing-place, at the stair-head. “Now then, my own Dietrich,” she whispered, “are you ready to run?” For like the best of wives, as she was, she did not much care to go anywhere without her husband.
But the deliberate Dietrich was not prepared to escort her. He had chosen to undress as usual, with his transcendental pipe in his mouth; indeed it was always the last thing that he took off before getting into bed, so that till all his philosophy was burned to ashes, his mind would not consent to any active corporeal exertion, especially to any locomotion so rapid as a race. At last he stood balancing, made up for the start; his eyes staring, his teeth clenched, his fists doubled, and his arms swinging, as if he were about to be admitted a burgess of Andernach—that is to say, by leaping backwards over a winnowing fan, with a well poised pail of water in his arms, in order to show if he accomplished it neatly.
“The night-light may be left burning where it is, Dietrich.”
“Now then, Malchen!”
“Now then Dietrich,—and run gently—on your toes!”
No sooner said than done. The modest Malchen with the speed of a young wild elephant made a rush across the room, and, with something of a jump and something more of a scramble, plunged headlong into the bed. The phlegmatic Dietrich was a thought later, from having included the whole length of the landing-place in his run, to help him in his leap, so that just as his bulk came squash! upon the coverlet, his predecessor was tumbling her body, skow-wow, bow-wow, any-how, over the side of the bedstead.
COUNTRY QUARTERS.
“Sancta Maria!” sobbed Madame Doppeldick, as she settled into hysterics upon the floor.
“Potz-tausend!” said Mr. Doppeldick, as he crawled backwards out of the bed like a crab.
“Ten thousand devils!” bellowed Captain Schenk—a suppressed exclamation that the first shock had driven from his mouth into his throat, from his throat into his lungs, and from thence into his stomach; but which the second shock had now driven out again in full force.
THE BEARER OF THE GREAT SEAL.
******
“Why, I thought, Mister Jean Paul Nemand (says the reader), that we left the Captain safe and sound, in his own bed, next the window, with the patch-work coverlet?”
“And so we did, Mister Carl Wilhelm Jemand (says the author,) but it was so short, that in five minutes he caught the cramp. Wherefore, as there was a second spare bed in the room, and as honest Dietrich had said nothing of other lodgers, and as of all blessings we ought to choose the biggest, the Captain determined to give it a trial—and between you and me he liked the bed well enough, till he felt a sort of smashing pain all over his body, his eyes squeezing out of his face, his nose squeezing into it, and his precious front teeth, at a gulp, going uninvited down his gullet!”
“WHY DID YOU SUP ON PORK?”