Coulisses Nos. 1 and 2 are still choke-full of actors and actresses, who must now come out. This is the day on which two courts, like two armies, are halted over against each other in two rooms, composedly preparing themselves for the minute when they are to march out and stand face to face, until at last it actually comes to that point, to which after such preparations and in such nearness to each other it very naturally must come, that of going away. The cubic contents of No. 1 stream after the Princess, consisting of Italians;--at the same moment, also, the court-retinue from coulisse No. 2 takes up its line of march towards head-quarters; it consists of Flachsenfingenites. At this moment two countries--properly only their abstracted and evaporated spirits--stand quite near each other, and now all depends upon the silken strings beginning to operate which I stretched across the room in the first Act; for the boundary shiftings and population-mixings of two so contiguous lands as Germany and Italy would be in one room almost as inevitable as in a _Papal brain-chamber_, had we not the string; but _that_ we have, and this keeps two populations, threatening to run into each other, so effectually apart, that it is only a pity and a shame--honesty feels the greatest--that the German Cabinets have not drawn some such cordon between themselves and the Italian; and did it not, then, depend upon them, where they would apply the cord,--to the floor, or to Italian hands or to Italian necks? When the English General History of the world and its German abridgment shall once have so nearly come up with the times as to take in hand and relate the year of this transfer, and among other things are able to remark that the Princess, after her entrance, seated herself in the velvet chair,--then should the Universal History quote the author from whom it borrows, namely, myself.... That was the second Act, and it was a very good one, and not so much comic as sublime. Third Act.--In this there is nothing but talking. A court is the parlor or talking-room of the country; the ministers and envoys are _listening-brethren_.[124] The Flachsenfingen Secretary read at a distance an Instrument, or the emption-bill of her marriage. Thereupon speeches were whispered,--two by the Italian minister,--two, also, by the Flachsenfingen minister (Schleunes),--none by the bride, which was a shorter way of saying nothing than that of the ministers was. Since, now, this sublime Act were verily ended, if _I_ should say nothing: it will, I trust, be allowed me for once, after many weeks, to obtain by begging and to append a little _extra-leaf_, and therein to say something. AN EXTRA-LEAF (BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION) UPON THE GREATER FREEDOM ENJOYED IN DESPOTISMS.