Towards Victor, as future courtier and patron, he knew not, for all that, how to assume the upright court-dignity which respects at once itself and others; but towards the people of the parsonage he amply observed the regular courtly contempt, and showed them well enough how little, without designs upon the Lord's son, he should have thought of even _looking_ over their garden-wall or window-sill, to say nothing of _coming_ over. Victor never hated anything else in his neighbor but hatred of other neighbors; and his respect for all classes, his contempt for all _eminent_ fools, his disgust at ceremonies, and his inclination as a humorist for the little theatres of life, formed the greatest contrast to the pharmaceutic infusorium, and to its disgust with men and deference for grandees. Victor gave his landlord thirty greetings to carry with him to the Italian _Tostato_ in Kussewitz, who had travelled with him, laughing and dancing, a day and a half out of Göttingen. The Apothecary, at his departure, left behind in Victor an annoying, sour sediment; even at the organ-blower, who brought up the coffee every Sunday, he could not laugh as usual. I will explain why he used to laugh at him. On that day the coachman was shaved, and, in fact, at first hand,--namely, by his own. Now the chin of this lazy box-incumbent had thrown up more mole-hills--so I euphoniously name warts--than are necessary for shaving and mowing. Among these the old man hacked and planed on Sunday morning,--for then it is that the common people put off at once the old Adam and the old shirt, and leave sins and beard to grow only on working-days,--boldly slipping his knife up and down among the warty _chagrin_ and cutting away. Now the man would have looked pitifully, with his ploughed-up facial foreground,--so that one must needs have wept blood at that which ran in red lines down over the chin of this stone river-god,--if the Prosector, like a Roman, had, out of stupidity, exhibited his wounds. But he showed nothing,--he had more sense than that; he picked tobacco-spunk into small caps, and put the headpieces upon the sore warts, and so made his appearance. "Let a Spener, a Cato the younger," said Victor, "just come into my study, and not laugh when a bellows-blower follows with coffee-cups, and with sixteen scalped warts and his chin bound up in spunk, looking like a garden-rockery overgrown with beautifully distributed moss,--let a Spener, I say, help laughing, if he can."