He finished his critique in the forenoon, and sent it to Stiefel, his chief, who wrote back that he would bring the money for it himself in the evening, for he now seized upon every possible opportunity of paying a visit. At dinner Firmian (in whose head the sultry, fœtid vapour of ill-temper would not dissolve and fall), said, "I can't understand how you come to care so very little about cleanliness and order. It would be better even if you rather _overdid_ your cleanliness than otherwise. People say, what a pity it is such an orderly man as Siebenkæs should have such a slovenly kind of wife!" To irony of this sort, though she knew quite well it _was_ irony, she always opposed regular formal arguments. He could never get her to enjoy these little jests instead of arguing about them, or join him in laughing at the masculine view of the question. The fact is, a woman abandons her opinion as soon as her husband adopts it. Even in church, the women sing the tunes an octave higher than the men that they may differ from them in all things. In the afternoon the great, the momentous, hour approached in which the ostracism, the banishment from house and home, of the checked calico gown was at last to be carried out--the last and greatest deed of the year 1785. Of this signal for fight, this Timour's and Muhammed's red battle-flag, this Ziska's hide, which always set them by the ears, his very soul was sick: he would have been delighted if somebody would have stolen it, simply to be quit of the wearisome, threadbare idea of the wretched rag for good and all. He did not hurry himself, but introduced his petition with all the wordy prolixity of an M.P. addressing the house (at home). He asked her to guess what might be the greatest kindness, the most signal favour which she could do him on this last day of the old year. He said he had an hereditary enemy, an Anti-Christ, a dragon, living under his roof; tares sown among his wheat by an enemy, which she could pull up if she chose; and, at last, he brought the checked calico gown out of the drawer, with a kind of twilight sorrow: "_This_," he said, "is the bird of prey which pursues me; the net which Satan sets to catch me; his sheep-skin my martyr-robe, my Cassim's slipper. Dearest, do me but this one favour--send it to the pawn-shop!" "Don't answer just yet," he said, gently laying his hand on her lips; "let me just remind you what a stupid parish did when the only blacksmith there was in it was going to be hanged in the village. This parish thought it preferable to condemn an innocent master-tailor or two to the gallows, because they could be better spared. Now, a woman of your good sense must surely see how much easier and better it would be to let me take away this mere piece of tailor's stitch-work, than metal things which we eat out of every day; the mourning calico won't be wanted, you know, as long as I'm alive."