When the cloth was off, I saw that it was time for me to set my foot to work at the rocking of Captain Oehrmann's cradle. My 'Hesperus' is too big a book. On other occasions I should have had time enough. On these occasions all I had to do to get the great Dutch tulip to close its petals in sleep was, to begin with wars and rumours of wars--then introduce the Law of Nature, or rather the _Laws_ of Nature, seeing that every fair and every war provides a fresh supply--from this point I had but a short step to arrive at the most sublime axioms of moral science, thus dipping the merchant before he knew where he was into the deepest centre of the health-giving mineral well of truth. Or I lighted up sundry new systems (of my own invention), held them under his nose, attacked and refuted them, benumbing and narcotising him with the smoke till he fell down senseless. Then came freedom! Then his daughter and I would open the window to the stars and the flowers outside, while I placed before the poor famished soul a rich supply of the loveliest poetical honey-bearing blossoms. Such had been my process on previous occasions. But this evening I took a shorter path. As soon as grace was said, I got as near as I could to complete unintelligibility, and proposed to the house of business of Oehrmann's soul (his body) the following query: whether there were not more Kartesians than Newtonists among the princes of Germany. "I do not mean as regards the animal world," I continued slowly and tediously. "Kartesius, as we know, is of opinion that the animals are insentient machines, and consequently, man, the noblest of animals, would be improperly comprehended in this dictum; what my meaning is, and what I want to know, is this--do not the majority (of the princes of Germany) consider that the essentiality of a realm consists in EXTENSION, as Kartesius holds that of matter to do, only the minority of them holding, as Newton (a greater man) does of matter, that its essentiality consists in SOLIDITY." He terrified me by answering with the greatest liveliness, and as broad awake as you please, "There are only two of them that can pay their way--the Prince of Flachsenfingen and the Prince of----" At this point his daughter placed a basket of clothes come from the wash upon the table, and a little box of letters upon the basket, and set to work printing her brothers' names at full length upon their shirts. As she took out of the basket a tall white festival tiara for her father, and took away from him the base Saturday cowl which he had on, I was incited to become as obscure and as long-winded as the night-cap and my own designs called upon me to be. Now, as there is nothing about which he is so utterly indifferent as my books, and polite literature in all its branches, I determined to settle him, once for all, with this detested stuff. I succeeded in pumping out what follows.