_My_ head was always calculating eventualities; _hers_, it struck me, never worried itself about difficulties till in the midst of them. Now, Jean Paul tells us that when a man detects any exaggerated bias in his character, instead of endeavoring, by daily watching, to correct it, he will be far more successful if he ally himself with some one of a diametrically opposite humor. If he be rash, for instance, let him seek companionship with the sluggish. If his tendency bear to over-imagination, let him frequent the society of realists. Why, therefore, should not I and Tintefleck be mutually beneficial? Take the two different kinds of wood in a bow: one will supply resistance, the other flexibility. It was a pleasant notion, and I resolved to test it. “Vaterchen,” said I, “call me to-morrow, when you get ready for the road. I will keep you company as far as Constance.” “Ah, sir,” said he, with a sigh, “you will be well weary of us before half the journey is over; but you shall be obeyed.” CHAPTER XXXII. I RELIEVE MYSELF OF MY PURSE Next morning, just as day was breaking, we set out on foot on our road to Constance. There was a pinkish-gray streak of light on the horizon, sure sign of a fine day, and the bright stars twinkled still in the clear half-sombre sky, and all was calm and noiseless,--nothing to be heard but the tramp of our own feet on the hard causeway. With the cowardly caution of one who feels the water with his foot before he springs in to swim, I was glad that I made my first experiences of companionship with these humble friends while it was yet dark and none could see us. The old leaven of snobbery was unsubdued in my heart, and, as I turned to look at poor Vaterchen and then at the tinsel finery of Catinka, I bethought me of the little consideration the world extends to such as these and their belongings. “Vagabonds all!” would say some rich banker, as he rolled by in his massive travelling-carriage, creaking with imperials and jingling with bells. “Vagabonds all!” would mutter the Jew pedler, as he looked down from the _banquette_ of the diligence. How slight is the sympathy of the realist for the poor creature whose life-labor is to please! How prone to regard him as useless, or, even worse, forgetting the while how a wiser than he has made many things in this beautiful world of ours that they should merely minister to enjoyment, gladden the eye and ear, and make our pilgrimage less weary! Where would be the crimson jay, where the scarlet bustard, where the gorgeous peacock with the nosegay on his tail, where the rose and the honeysuckle and the purple foxglove mingling with the wild thorn in our hedgerows, if the universe were of _their_ creation, and this great globe but one big workshop? You never insist that the daisy and the daffodil should be pot-herbs; and why are there not to be wild flowers in humanity as well as in the fields? Is it not a great