And all this bliss bursting upon my heart dissolved my dream. And I awoke--but nothing had truly changed or passed away; for the mother of my dream still clasped her child close to her heart here on earth's face; she reads my dream, and, for its truth, forgives, perchance, the dreamer who tells his tale. BOOK III. CHAPTER IX. A POTATO WAR WITH WOMEN--AND WITH MEN--A WALK IN DECEMBER--TINDER FOR JEALOUSY--A WAR OF SUCCESSION ON THE SUBJECT OF A PIECE OF CHECKED CALICO--RUPTURE WITH STIEFEL--SAD EVENING MUSIC. I should very much like to make an incidental digression about this point; however, I feel that I don't dare. You see there are, now-a-days, so very few readers (at all events, of the younger and more aristocratic sort) who don't know everything--while, at the same time, they expect their pet authors (and I don't blame them for it) to know more than themselves--which is impossible. By the help of the English machinery (now brought to such high perfection), of encyclopædias, of encyclopædic-dictionaries, of conversations-lexicons, of excerpts from conversations-lexicons, of Ersch and Gruber's 'Universal Dictionaries of all the Sciences,' a young man, after devoting his _days_ to it for a month or two (he has no occasion to devote his _nights_) converts himself into a perfect Senatus Academicus of all the Faculties of a University, which he represents in his own single person; besides, in a sense, also himself standing to it in the relation of the student-body at the same time.