extinguish conflagrations into which it was thrown, why not, then, _auto-da-fés_ also?" I have long been watching for an opportunity here to force the world to ask why the case of a mouse's death should interest it more than the shooting down of an army in general history,--the loss of another's hair-puff more than Christina's abdicated crown.[64] ... This interest arises from the source whence it comes with those to whom the case really occurs: because I relate it copiously, i. e. because the readers, like the heroes concerned in it, painfully live over one moment of childish history after another. Many little blows riddle the firmest man as surely as one great one; and it is all one whether fate does it or an author. And thus it comes that the modern man is placed so near to the index-finger of time, that he can see it move; hence a trifle, when it takes up _many_ moments, becomes so great to us, and this short life, which, like the picture of our soul in the _Orbis Pictus_,[65] consists of points--of black and golden ones--seems so long. And hence, too, everywhere, as on this page, does our serious mood stand so near to our mirthful. Except Flamin, all moved to church, godfather and godchild. It was a so-called week-day prayer-hour, such as will be set apart in every rational duchy and margravedom, where one still sees to it that the parson shall freeze once or twice a week, and that, as novices do for the exercise of obedience, they may be obliged to sprinkle dry sticks, to scatter the seed of the Divine word into empty pews, as Melancthon did into empty pots.[66] In German countries, mine and a few others excepted, it takes two centuries thoroughly to do away a folly,--one to recognize it, and one more to do it away. The _views_ of a consistory always become rational a hundred years sooner than its orders (_circularia_) do.