Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. I. — John Shaqi
Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. I.Jean Paul
General
Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. I.
Jean Paul
Fiction
Now the Prince with his Lordship and his court (including even Dr.
Culpepper) returned to Germany. Le Baut tarried awhile longer to
appease the niece and persuade her to take the journey. But it was not
only impossible to draw all her deeply sunk roots out of the land of
freedom and go with the party to Germany, but she even separated
herself, not only by seas, but by a bill of divorce, from the filthy
favorite. She was obliged to leave with the Chamberlain her second
child, his real daughter; but the first, the Infante, she clasped to
her maternal breast. Le Baut was glad enough to let it be so, and
thought that after the building-oration the scaffolding of the building
should also go into the house-stove. But when he appeared under the
German throne-canopy, his sun (January) stood at the summer solstice,
which from decreasing warmth gradually passed over to cold storms.
January's love could more easily rise and fall than stay still, and the
greatest crime with him was absence. Le Baut, stripped of both wife and
child, must needs lose now in comparison with his Lordship, because the
latter came upon the stage, and under January's throne-canopy as
treasurer and coast-warden of two treasures left behind in London. But
there were deeper reasons. His Lordship easily governed the Regent,
because he held him in neither by his own nor other people's vices, but
by his own virtues. In the first place, he required nothing of him, not
so much as diet and chastity. Secondly, he lifted no cousins into the
saddle, but tipped bad men out of it; he bore him like a hawk on his
gloved fist, but the falconer did it not for the purpose of darting the
Prince upon doves and hares, but in order to make him at once
_watchful_ and _tame_. Thirdly, his firmness and his fineness mutually
compensated each other: the best one to rule over changeable men is the
unchangeable. Fourthly, he was not the favorite, but the associate,
remained always a Briton and a lord and the country's beneficent
bee-father (apiary), whereas January was the queen-bee and in the
queen-bee's prison. Fifthly, he was one of the few men to whom one must
be _equal_ in order to resist their will; and any one who would play
the juggler's trick of throwing a padlock on his mouth slyly, soon had
one to fetters and manacles on his own soul. Sixthly, he had a good
cheese. This last point needs no copious explanation. In Chester he had
a farmer, who produced a cheese, the like of which was not to be found
in Europe; but to princes generally an extraordinary cheese is more
gratifying than an extraordinary address of thanks from the provincial
syndic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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