12: Nations—unlike rivers, which precipitate their impurities in level places and when at rest—drop their baseness just whilst in the most violent motion; and become the dirtier the farther they flow along through lazy flats.

Thus lovingly we both reached home; and perhaps in the sequel of this Fair day might still have enjoyed a glorious after-midnight, had not the Devil led my eye to the ninth volume of Lichtenberg's Works, and the 206th page, where this passage occurs: "It is not impossible that at a future period, our Chemists may light on some means of suddenly decomposing the Atmosphere by a sort of Ferment. In this way the world may be destroyed." Ah! true indeed! Since the Earth-ball is lapped up in the larger Atmospheric ball, let but any chemical scoundrel, in the remotest scoundrel-island, say in New Holland, devise some decomposing substance for the Atmosphere, like what a spark of fire would be for a powder-wagon: in a few seconds, the monstrous devouring world-storm catches me and you in Flätz by the throat; my breathing, and the like, in this choke-air is over, and the whole game ended! The Earth becomes a boundless gallows, where the very cattle are hanged: worm-powder, and bug-liquor, Bradly ant-ploughs, and rat-poison, and wolf-traps are, in this universal world-trap and world-poison, no longer specially needful; and the Devil takes the whole, in the Bartholomew-night, when this cursed "Ferment" is invented.

From the true soul, however, I concealed these deadly Night Thoughts; seeing she would either painfully have sympathised in them, or else mirthfully laughed at them. I merely gave orders that next morning (Saturday) she was to be standing booted and ready, at the outset of the returning coach; if so were she would have me speedily fulfil her wishes in regard to that stock of Rathships which lay so near her heart. She rejoiced in my purpose, gladly surrendering the market for such prospects. I too slept sound, my great toe tied to her finger, the whole night through.

28: When Nature takes the huge old Earth-round, the Earth-loaf, and kneads it up again, for the purpose of introducing under this pie-crust 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?"

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.

At the appointed hour, all gaily 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 being sawed 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 fire-brands 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, hit 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 Domsday 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 Historiolæ; 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 out-root 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,