It may not be otherwise than agreeable to my fair readers to be informed that the bridegroom now put on a liver-coloured dress coat, and that he walked to the church with his dress-maker without any dress cravat, and with no queue in his hair, picturing as he went, to his own satirical delight, the slanderous glances with which the fair Kuhschnappelers were following the good stranger girl across the market to the sacrificial altar of her maiden name. He had said on a previous occasion, "We ought rather to facilitate than obstruct backbiting, to a moderate extent, in a married woman, as some slight compensation for lost flatteries." The Schulrath Stiefel remained in the bridal chamber, where he sketched the outlines of a critique on a school-programme at the writing-table. I see before me, as I write, the lovers kneeling at the altar steps; and I should like to cast wishes at them (as flowers are thrown), especially a wish that they may be like the married in Heaven, who, according to Swedenborg's vision, always merge into one angel--although on earth, too, they are often fused, by warmth, into one angel, and that a fallen one--the husband (who is the head of the wife) representing the butting head of this evil one; this wish, I say, I would fain cast at them; but my attention, in common with that of all the wedding company is riveted by an extraordinary circumstance and puzzling apparition behind the music desks of the choir. For there appears there, looking down at us--and we all looking up at it--Siebenkæs's _spirit_, as the popular expression has it, _i.e_. his body, as it _ought_ to be called. If the bridegroom should look up he might turn pale, and think he saw himself. We are all wrong; he only turns red. It was his friend Leibgeber who was standing there, having many years ago vowed to travel any distance to his marriage, solely that he might laugh at him for twelve hours' time.