The stars glided lightly over its night. A friendly, blue Sunday morning hung floating over the village in its finery, and held its breath lest it should snatch off a ripe, linden-blossom, or the down of a marsh-marigold. Victor could hear the forte-pianissimo sounding down from the palace over the reposing village, and must needs sigh with the asthma of blissful longing, "Ah, when shall I have to cease swimming upon this still, shining sea, over this fair anchorage of life?" ... When Fate answered, "To-day!" For this very day, on Sunday, there came from the residence-city of Flachsenfingen a light-headed fool (in fact, two) in a no less light-bodied Berlin, and took out of his package a letter to him from his Lordship. "On the 21st of June (Thursday), the Italian Princess makes her entry into Kussewitz. On Wednesday, I leave here, and present thee in St. Luna to the Prince, who accompanies me to that place. I pray thee, however, to repair on the Saturday following to the _Island of Union_,[99] because the little which, for want of opportunity, I cannot say to thee in St. Luna, I shall reserve for the island. Thou wilt find me there. The bearer of this is our respected court-apothecary _Zeusel_, in whose house thou wilt, as court-physician, have thy future residence. Farewell!" H. "Zeusel?" asks the reader, and ponders the matter. "I know not the Zeusels." No more do I; but I say to myself, Is not this carrying things too far? And is it not a regular imposition, that the correspondent of this work cannot, by all the representations made to him by me through the dog, be induced even to arrange things in this history in as orderly a manner as they are, indeed, in every wretched romance, and even in--a house of correction, where every new correctioner rehearses neatly to the old ones, in the very first hour, his total _Fata_, even to the introductory cudgelling on entering, from which the historian has freshly arrived. By Heaven! people actually rush and leap into my work, as into a passengers' room, and neither reader nor Devil knows who their dogs and cats are.