Kuhschnappel (to return to our subject) has the pull over hundreds of other towns. I admit, as Nicolai's assertion, that of the 60,000 which Nürnberg contained there are but 30,000 left, and that is something; at the same time it takes fifty burghers, and more, to be equivalent to one aristocrat, which is much. Now I am in a position to show at any moment by reference to registers of deaths and baptisms, that the borough of Kuhschnappel contains almost as many aristocrats as burghers, which is all the more wonderful when we reflect that the former, on account of their appetites, find it a harder matter to live than the latter. What modern town, I ask, can point to so many free inhabitants? Were there not even in free Athens and Rome--in the West Indies there were of course--more slaves than free men, for which reason the latter did not dare to make the former wear any distinctive dress? And are there not in all towns more tenants than noble landlords, although the latter _ought_, one would think, to be in the majority, since peasants and burghers grow only by nature, while aristocrats are raised, both by nature, and by art (in the shape of princely and imperial chanceries). If this appendix were not a digression (and digressions are generally expected to be brief) I should proceed to show, at some length, that in several respects Kuhschnappel, if she does not surpass, is at least quite on a par with, many of the towns of Switzerland; for instance, in a good method of sharpening and lengthening the sword of justice, and, on the whole, in her manner of wielding a good, spiked, knotty mace--in the tax she levies on (ecclesiastical) corn, not that imported from abroad, but that of home growth, to exclude _thought_ and other (in an ecclesiastical sense) rubbish of that sort--and even in her "green market," or trade in young men. As regards the latter, the reason why the trade with France for young Kuhschnappelers to serve as porters and defenders of the Crown has hitherto been so flat is, that the Swiss have so terribly overdone the market with fine young fellows who go and stand in front of all the doors and (in war time) in front of all the cannons. Of course, were it not for this, there would be more doors than one with a Kuhschnappeler standing and saying, "Nobody at home." (Indeed, here in my second edition, I can assert that Kuhschnappel continues to maintain its title of _imperial market_ town, like a secondary electoral dignity, and keeps up its old protective laws against the import of ideas and the export of information, and its blood tithe; or young men tithe to France, just as Switzerland does, which is like the keeper of the castle of the Wartburg, who keeps constantly re-blackening the indelible mark of the ink which Luther threw at the devil.) CHAPTER III.