The Dragoon next morning twitched me by the ear, and secretly whispered into it that he had a pleasant fairing to give his sister; and so would ride off somewhat early, on the nag he had yesterday purchased of the horse-dealer. I thanked him beforehand.
28. When Nature takes the huge old Earth-round, the Earth-loaf and kneads it up again, for the purpose of introducing, under this piecrust, new stuffing and Dwarfs--she then, for most part, as a mother when baking will do to her daughters, gives in jest a little fraction of the dough (two or three thousand square leagues of such dough are enough for a child) to some Poetical or Philosophical, or Legislative polisher, that so the little elf may have something to be shaping and manufacturing beside its mother. And when the other young ones get a taste of sisterkin's baking, they all clap hands, and cry, "Aha, Mother! canst bake like Suky here?"
At the appointed hour all gayly started from the Staple, I excepted; for I still retained, even in the fairest daylight, that nocturnal Devil's-Ferment and Decomposition (of my cerebral globe as well as of the Earth-globe) fermenting in my head; a proof that the night had not affected me, or exaggerated my fear. The Blind Passenger, whom I liked so ill, also mounted along with us, and looked at me as usual, but without effect; for on this occasion, when the destruction not of myself only, but of worlds, was occupying my thoughts, the Passenger was nothing to me but a joke and a show; as a man, while his leg is a-sawing off, does not feel the throbbing of his heart; or amid the humming of cannon, does not guard himself from that of wasps; so to me any Passenger, with all the firebrands he might throw into my near or distant Future, could appear but ludicrous, at a time when I was reflecting that the "Ferment" might, even in my journey between Flätz and Neusattel, be, by some American or European man of science, quite guiltlessly experimenting and decomposing, lighted upon by accident and let loose. The question, nay prize-question now, however, were this: "In how far, since Lichtenberg's threatening, it may not appear world-murderous and self-murderous, if enlightened Potentates of chemical nations do not enjoin it on their chemical subjects,--who in their decompositions and separations may so easily separate the soul from their body and unite Heaven with Earth,--not in future to make any other chemical experiments than those already made, which hitherto have profited the State rather than harmed it?"
Unfortunately, I continued sunk in this Doomsday of the Ferment with all my thoughts and meditations, without, in the whole course of our return from Flätz to Neusattel, suffering or observing anything, except that I actually arrived there, and at the same time saw the Blind Passenger once more go his ways.
My Bergelchen alone had I constantly looked at by the road, partly that I might still see her, so long as life and eyes endured; partly that, even at the smallest danger to her, be it a great, or even all-over-sweeping Deluge and World's-doom, I might die, if not for her, at least by her, and so, united with that stanch, true heart, cast away a plagued and plaguing life, in which, at any rate, not half of my wishes for her have been fulfilled.
So then were my Journey over--crowned with some Historiola; and in time coming, perhaps, still more rewarded through you, ye Friends about Flätz, if in these pages you shall find any well-ground pruning-knives, whereby you may more readily outroot the weedy tangle of Lies, which for the present excludes me from the gallant Schabacker--Only this cursed Ferment still sits in my head. Farewell, then, so long as there are Atmospheres left us to breathe. I wish I had that Ferment out of my head. Yours always,
Attila Schmelzle.
P. S.--My brother-in-law has kept his promise well, and Berga is dancing. Particulars in my next!