His disappointed rival has still this consolation, that he holds a seat in the wasp-nest of the Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek.[55] Should the Parson ever chrysalise himself into an author, the watch-wasp may then buzz out, and dart its sting into the chrysalis, and put its own brood in the room of the murdered butterfly. As the Subrector everywhere went about, and threatened in plain terms that he would review his colleague, let not the public be surprised that Fixlein's Errata, and his Masoretic Exercitationes, are to this hour withheld from it.
[55] New Universal German Library, a reviewing periodical; in those days conducted by Nicolai, a sworn enemy to what has since been called the New School. (See Tieck, ante)—Ed.
In spring, the widowed church receives her new husband; and how it will be, when Fixlein, under a canopy of flower-trees, takes the Sponsa Christi in one hand, and his own Sponsa in the other,—this, without an Eighth Letter-Box, which, in the present case, may be a true jewel-box and rainbow-key,[56] can no mortal figure, except the Sponsus himself.
[56] Superstition declares, that on the spot where the rainbow rises, a golden key is left.
EIGHTH LETTER-BOX.
Instalment in the Parsonage.
On the 15th of April 1793, the reader may observe, far down in the hollow, three baggage-wagons groaning along. These baggage-wagons are transporting the house-gear of the new Parson to Hukelum: the proprietor himself, with a little escort of his parishioners, is marching at their side, that of his china sets and household furniture there may be nothing broken in the eighteenth century, as the whole came down to him unbroken from the seventeenth. Fixlein hears the School-bell ringing behind him; but this chime now sings to him, like a curfew, the songs of future rest: he is now escaped from the Death-valley of the Gymnasium, and admitted into the abodes of the Blessed. Here dwells no envy, no colleague, no Subrector; here in the heavenly country, no man works in the New Universal German Library; here, in the heavenly Hukelumic Jerusalem, they do nothing but sing praises in the church; and here the Perfected requires no more increase of knowledge.... Here too one need not sorrow that Sunday and Saint's day so often fall together into one.
Truth to tell, the Parson goes too far: but it was his way from of old never to paint out the whole and half shadows of a situation, till he was got into a new one; the beauties of which he could then enhance by contrast with the former. For it requires little reflection to discover that the torments of a schoolmaster are nothing so extraordinary; but, on the contrary, as in the Gymnasium, he mounts from one degree to another, not very dissimilar to the common torments of Hell, which, in spite of their eternity, grow weaker from century to century. Moreover, since, according to the saying of a Frenchman, deux afflictions mises ensemble peuvent devenir une consolation, a man gets afflictions enow in a school to console him; seeing out of eight combined afflictions—I reckon only one for every teacher—certainly more comfort is to be extracted than out of two. The only pity is, that school-people will never act towards each other as court-people do: none but polished men and polished glasses will readily cohere. In addition to all this, in schools—and in offices generally—one is always recompensed: for, as in the second life, a greater virtue is the recompense of an earthly one, so, in the Schoolmaster's case, his merits are always rewarded by more opportunities for new merits; and often enough he is not dismissed from his post at all.—
Eight Gymnasiasts are trotting about in the Parsonage, setting up, nailing to, hauling in. I think, as a scholar of Plutarch, I am right to introduce such seeming minutiæ. A man whom grown-up people love, children love still more. The whole school had smiled on the smiling Fixlein, and liked him in their hearts, because he did not thunder, but sport with them; because he said Sie (They) to the Secundaners, and the Subrector said Ihr (Ye); because his uprearing forefinger was his only sceptre and baculus; because in the Secunda he had interchanged Latin epistles with his scholars; and in the Quinta, had taught not with Napier's Rods (or rods of a sharper description), but with sticks of barley-sugar.
Today his churchyard appeared to him so solemn and festive, that he wondered (though it was Monday) why his parishioners were not in their holiday, but merely in their weekday drapery. Under the door of the Parsonage stood a weeping woman; for she was too happy, and he was her—son. Yet the mother, in the height of her emotion, contrives quite readily to call upon the carriers, while disloading, not to twist off the four corner globes from the old Frankish chest of drawers. Her son now appeared to her as venerable, as if he had sat for one of the copperplates in her pictured Bible; and that simply, because he had cast off his pedagogue hair-cue, as the ripening tadpole does its tail; and was now standing in a clerical periwig before her: he was now a Comet, soaring away from the profane Earth, and had accordingly changed from a stella caudata into a stella crinita.