She would persist, and insist, on communicating all her prorogations of parliament and other decrees to the servant girl, in several duplicates and revised copies, let him protest as much as he chose. She asked him every thing she had to ask him (no matter what) two or three separate times over; and that whether he shouted beforehand like a quack doctor at a fair, or swore afterwards like one of his customers. She continued to say, "It has struck four quarters to four o'clock." When he had proved, with immense care and trouble, that Augspurg was not in the Island of Cyprus, she would return him the quiet incontrovertible answer, "Well, it's not in Roumania either, nor in Bulgaria, nor in the Principality of Jauer, nor in Vauduz, nor in the neighbourhood of Hüshen--two very little, insignificant places, both of them." He could never bring her to give an unqualified assent, when he made the unconditional and positive assertion (in a loud voice), "It's in Swabia--or the devil's in it." She would go no further than to admit that it was situated, in a certain sense, and to some extent, between Franconia, Bavaria, and Switzerland, &c.; it was only to the bookbinder's wife that she would _acknowledge_ that it was in Swabia. Burdens, nay, overloads, of this sort, however, can be borne more or less easily and bravely by a soul fortified by the example of great sufferers--such as a Lycurgus, who let himself be deprived of an eye, and an Epictetus, who allowed his master to hack off his leg; and all these little failings of Lenette's have been touched upon in a previous chapter. But I have to tell of new shortcomings besides; and as regards these, I leave it to unbiassed married men to determine whether they are among the matters which husbands can, and should, put up with. Firstly: Lenette washed her hands forty times in the course of the day, at the very least; no matter what she touched, she must needs put herself through this process of Holy Re-baptism; like a Jew, she was rendered unclean by the propinquity of _everything_. She would far more probably have followed the example of Rabbi Akiba, than have been in the least astonished at his proceedings--who, when he was a captive in prison, and in the direst distress for water, instead of quenching his thirst with the very small quantity of it he could get, preferred to use it for his ablutions. "Of course it is right and proper that she should be scrupulous about cleanliness," said Siebenkæs, "and more so than I am; but there are limits to all things. Why doesn't she rub herself with a towel when anybody breathes upon her? Why not purify her lips with soap after a fly has deposited itself (and not _only_ itself) upon them? I'm sure she turns our sitting-room into a regular English man-of-war, scoured and holystoned from stem to stern every morning; and I look on as pleased as any officer on her quarter-deck."