One Lady Day, towards evening, however, he hit upon an idea which will quite reassure all fair readers of his history who may be in a state of anxiety about him, and which made _him_ happier than the receipt of the biggest basket of bread with little baskets of fruit in it would have done--or a hamper of wine. He had felt sure all along that he _would_ hit upon an idea. Whenever he was in a difficulty of any kind, he always used to say, "Now, I wonder what I shall hit upon _this_ time; for I _shall_ hit upon something or other as sure as there are four chambers in my brain." The delightful idea in question was, that he should do what I am doing at this moment--write a book; only his was to be a satirical one.[22] A torrent of blood rushed through the opened sluices of his heart, right in amongst the wheels and mill-machinery of his ideas, and the whole of the mental mechanism rattled, whirred, and jingled in a moment--a peck or two of material for the book was ground on the spot. I know of no greater mental tumult--hardly of any sweeter--which can arise in a young man's being, than that which he experiences when he is walking up and down his room, and forming the daring resolution that he will take a book of blank paper and make it into a manuscript; indeed it is a point which might be argued whether Winckelmann, or Hannibal the great general, strode up and down _their_ rooms at a greater pace when they respectively formed the (equally daring) resolution that they would go to Rome. Siebenkæs, having made up his mind to write a 'Selection from the Devil's Papers,' was forced to run out of the house, and three times round the market-place, just to fix his fluttering, rushing ideas into their proper grooves again by the process of tiring his legs. He came back wearied by the glow within him--looked to see if there was enough white paper in the house for his manuscript--and running up to his Lenette, who was tranquilly working away at a cap, gave her a kiss before she could well take the needle out of her mouth--last thorn upon the rose-tree! During the kiss she quietly gave a finishing stitch to the border of the cap (squinting down at it the best way she could without moving her head). "Rejoice with me!" he cried, "come and dance about with me! to-morrow I'm going to begin a work, a book! Roast the calf's head to-night, though it be a breach of our ten commandments." For he and she, on the Wednesday before, had formed themselves into a committee on food regulations, and, of the Thirty-nine articles of domestic economy, which had then been passed and subscribed to, one was that, Brahminlike, they were to do without meat at supper.