One needs to be a man--a German man and a civil servant--to be able to experience the full horror of something like this. Mrs Johanna and Miss Helene Löhnefinke, without ever having considered the claims of the moon on people, had sided totally with the moon and were exacting its revenge on him who had despised it. It was not foreseeable how far down they might bring their husband and father--they had brought him down enough as it was. Late that night, when I was back with my baker, I smoked half a dozen pipes musing over the lessons and experiences of the previous day and decided around midnight to send my son, currently studying mathematics in Göttingen, a copy of the complete works of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter* for his next birthday. *Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825) was born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter and was a German romantic writer of humorous novels and stories. He changed his name to Jean in honour of the French romantic, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.