and consider the reasons which may persuade first parents to become such, and to marry, and serve Destiny in the capacity of sewing and spinning machines of linseed, hemp, flax, and tow, to be wound by her in endless networks and coils around the earthly sphere. My strongest reason, and, I trust, yours also, is the thought of the Day of Judgment. For, in the event of our becoming the entrepreneurs of the human race, I shall see all my descendants, when they ascend from the calcined earth like vapour, at the last day, into the nearest planet, and fall into order for the last review; and among this harvest of children and grandchildren, I shall hit upon a few sensible people with whom one may be able to exchange a rational word or two—men whose whole lives were passed, as well as lost, amid thunder and lightning (as according to the Romans those whom the gods loved were killed by lightning), and who never closed their eyes or their ears, however wild the storm. I see the four heathen evangelists among them too, Socrates, Cato, Epictetus, and Antoninus, men who went through the world, using their voices like fire-engine pipes, two hundred feet long, to save people from being burnt out of house and home by the fire of their own passions, sluicing them all over with pure, cold, Alp-water. And there can be no doubt after all, that I may really be the arch-papa, and you the arch-mamma, of some very great and celebrated people, that’s to say, if we choose. I tell you, Eve, that I have it here in black and white among my excerpts and collectanea that I shall be the forefather, ancestor, and Bethlehem of an Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Rousseau, Goethe, Kant, Leibnitz, people, take them for all in all, who are as able thinkers as their protoplast himself, if not abler. Eve, thou active and important member of the fruit-bearing jointstock company, or productive class of the state (consisting of thyself and this marriage-preacher), I assure you I expect to pass a few hours of exquisite enjoyment when on that neighbouring star I survey in a cursory manner that classic concourse newly risen from the dead, and at length kneel down, and cry, “Good morning, my children! Such of you as are Jews were wont to utter an ejaculatory prayer when ye met a wise man; but what such utterance would suffice for me, now that I behold all the wise and all the faculties at once, all of them my own blood relations too, who amid the wolfish hunger of their desires have stedfastly refrained from forbidden apples, pears, and pine apples, and, deep as their thirst for wisdom might be, committed no orchard-robbery on the tree of knowledge, though their first parents seized upon the forbidden fruit, although they had never known what hunger was, and upon the tree of knowledge, although they possessed all knowledge, except knowledge of the serpent nature.” And then I shall arise from the ground, pass into the angelic crowd, fall on the bosom of some distinguished descendant, and, throwing my arms around him, say, “Thou, true, good, contented-minded, gentle son! If I could just have shown thee only, sitting in thy brood-cell, to my Eve, the queen-bee of this great swarm here present, at the time when I was delivering the second head of my marriage sermon, I’m sure she would have listened to reason, and given a favourable answer.’”
“And thou, Siebenkæs, art that same, true, good son, and thou restest ever on the warm, heaving breast of
“Thy Friend.
“Postscript and Clausula Salutaris.
“Please to forgive me this merry private ball and witches’ dance upon cheap and nasty letter-paper, notwithstanding that you are unfortunately an infinitesimal fractional part of the German race, and as such, can’t be expected either to stand, or to understand, such a dance of ideas. This is why I never print anything for the unwieldy German intellect; entire sheets which I have spawned full of playful idea-fishes of this sort I consign at once to regions where such productions do not usually arrive till they attain the evening of their days, having previously exercised the right of transit through the booksellers’ shops. I was eight days in Hof, and am at present living a retired life at Bayreuth; in both of these towns I have made faces, that is, other people’s profiles; but most of the heads which sat or stood to my scissors opined that all was not quite right in mine. Tell me the real truth of the matter; it’s not altogether a matter of indifference to me, because if I should turn out not to be quite ‘all there,’ I should be incapable of devising my property by will, or of exercising various civil functions.
“In conclusion, I send a thousand kind remembrances and kisses to your dear, good Lenette, and my compliments to Herr Schulrath Stiefel, and will you please ask him if he is any relation to Magister Stiefel, the rector of Holzdorf and Lochau (in Wittemberg), who prophesied (incorrectly, as I consider) that the end of the world would take place on the 1st January, 1533, at 8 o’clock in the morning, and lived to die in his own bed after all. I also send, for you and the ‘Advertiser,’ a couple of programmes of Professor Lang’s of this place, relative to the General Superintendent of Bayreuth, and one of Dr. Frank’s of Pavia. There is a very charming young lady, exceedingly clever and intellectual, living here at the Sun Hotel (she is in the front rooms, and I in the back). She has been very much pleased with me and my face, I am happy to tell you, seeing how exactly you and I are alike, the only difference between us being my lame foot. So that the things I pride myself upon in ladies’ society are my likeness to you and my weaknesses. Unless I have been misinformed, this lady is a poor niece of your old uncle’s with the broken glass wig, and is being brought up at his expense, and destined for a marriage with some Kuhschnappeler of the upper ten thousand. Perhaps she may soon be forwarded to you, entered in the way-bill as bridegroom’s effects.
“The above is my oldest news, but my newest news, namely your own self, I shall not expect to arrive here at Bayreuth till I and the spring get back to it together (for the day after to-morrow I am off to meet it in Italy), and we, I and the spring, together beautify the world to such a degree that you will certainly enjoy a happy time of it in Bayreuth, the houses and the hills of that place being so particularly charming. And so, fare thee somewhat well.”
They all felt certain that the Kuhschnappeler of rank for whom the Heimlicher’s niece was being brought up could be none other than the Venner Rosa, whose little burnt-down stump of a heart—what was left of it after being hitherto made use of to set fire to the bosoms of female humanity in general (as the lamp in a smoking-room serves to kindle the pipes of the collective frequenters thereof)—would be the marriage torch to light her to her new home.
As there were three heavens in this letter—one for each of the party—kind remembrances for Lenette, the programmes for Peltzstiefel, the letter itself for Siebenkæs—I shouldn’t have been astonished if the terzetto of them had danced for joy. The Schulrath, intoxicated with delight—for the glad blood rose to his sober head—opened the papers sent him upon the square patterned supper-cloth (which was laid already), and hungrily began to devour his three printed “relishes before supper,” and literary petits soupers, upon the tin plate without even saying grace, until an invitation to stay and have some supper reminded him that he must be off. But before leaving, he petitioned that, by way of fee for having acted as middleman and court of arbitration between them, or as an alkali to promote the blending of his oil with her water—he might have a new profile of Lenette. The old one cut out by Leibgeber (which the letter brought to his recollection), and which, as we may remember, Leibgeber let him have, happened to have been put into the pocket of his dressing-gown and sent to the wash with it (being of much the same colour, moreover). “It shall be put on the stocks to-night,” said Siebenkæs.
When the Schulrath was going, as he could see that the ring upon Lenette’s finger didn’t squeeze it so uncomfortably as it had done (and gave himself credit for having been the means of filing it smoother and padding it softer), he shook her hand with much warmth, and said—