When Germany had delivered discourses enough to Italy, and Italy to Germany, then Germany, or rather Flachsenfingen, or properly a piece of it, the Minister Schleunes, took the Princess by the hand and led her out of the torrid zone into the frigid; I mean, not from the bridal bed to the wedded bed, but--from the Italian territory of the apartment into the Flachsenfingenite, away over the silken Rubicon. The Flachsenfingen court stands over yonder as right wing, and has not yet gone into the fight. So soon as she had passed the silken line, then it was well that the first thing she did in her new land should be something memorable; and in fact she did, before the eyes of her new court, take 4½ paces and--sit down in the Flachsenfingen chair, which I set out vacant for that purpose in the very first Act. Now, at last, the right wing marched into fire, for the kissing of hands and sleeves. Each one in the right wing--the left not at all--felt the dignity of what he entered upon, and this feeling which melted into one with personal pride came--as according to Plattner pride is akin to the sublime--quite _apropos_ to my Benefit-farce, in which I cannot succeed in being sublime enough. Great and silent, embarked in silken bow-nets, buried in a gulf of robes, the court-dames sail up with their lips to the still hand which is fastened with conjugal manacles to a stranger's. Less stately, but still stately, is urged on, also, the Adamitish portion of the _Dramatis Personæ_, among whom, unfortunately, I see the apothecary Zeusel. We know no one among them but the minister, his son Mat, who does not observe anything whatever of our hero, the Physician in ordinary to the Princess, Culpepper, who, transformed by fat and his doctor's beaver into a heavy Lot's-pillar-of-salt, pushes himself like a turtle into the presence of the Regent and Patient. No mortal knows how Zeusel torments me. Contrary to all order of precedence, I prefer to present, sooner than I do him, the fat livery-servants, swollen into knavish stupidity, whose coats consist less of threads than of laces, and who bend themselves like yellow ribbon-preparations before weary eyes, wont to look on fairer forms. Victor regarded, through his English opera-glass, the Italian glazed court-faces as at least picturesquely beautiful; on the contrary, he found the German parade-masks so worn out and yet so starched, so languid and yet so on the stretch, their looks so evaporated and yet so brimstone-smoked!... I still keep Zeusel back by means of some Easter-lambs or _agnus Dei's_ of pages' faces, soft and white as mites; a nurse would like to lay them with their nipple-glass-mouths to her breast.