The memorizing consisted of his waking and screaming in one steady scream for the bosom in which the Creator had stored up for him the first manna in life's wilderness. But not till five o'clock did the mother still him with the maternal sleep-potion, and enable the little speaker to close his throat-lid[71] and eyelids at once. At first I had come near suppressing--from respect for the Parson's lady--the fact that she suckled, and so, like a whale as it were, still reckoned among the mammalia, nourished at her bosom another child than Cupid; but I flattered myself, upon reflection, that a person who is neither a theatre-princess nor a crown-princess would not be so strictly judged as others, if she _had_ children or milk.... Before I say that Clotilda came, I will, inasmuch as she has eight residences,--although many a magnate who owns sixteen noble residences still seeks a seventeenth with walls in which he may sleep,--offer a slight excuse for her going into the house of a common citizen; but she needs after all no other justification than the fact that she was in the country, where often the oldest blood can avail itself of no better intercourse than that of citizens, unless perhaps it is that of cattle, which even some not uncultured cavaliers really prefer.... It strikes five o'clock,--the matchless beauty enters,--the moon hangs down towards her out of heaven like a white leaf newly budded,--the gay, innocent blood in St. Luna rises under her influence like the tide,--all is rehabilitated. But the sixth chapter is run out.... And as Spitz is not yet on hand with the seventh, the reader and I can exchange with each other a rational word. I confess, he has long appreciated me and my doings; he sees clearly that all goes on in the finest biographical train,--the dog, my littleness, and the heroes of these dog-days. Nor have I ever denied that he will continue to be more and more dazzled by the splendor and sparkle of this foot-birth,[72] since I am so very busy, waxing, rubbing, and polishing at it,--more so than if it were a man's boot or a military horse's-hoof in Berlin. Nay, I need not wait to have it foretold to me from any cup of coffee-grounds (for I see it already from my knowledge of human nature and from the coffee which I drink) that this is saying the very least, and that the proper reading-rage will then, and not till then, come over the poor dear fellow, when, in the course of this work, at which, as in the low-warp tapestry,[73] two workmen weave sitting in one chair, the historic figures of this tapestry, together with their grouping, shall come forth from the ball of the foot to the seam of the skull. At present there is hardly a heel, a shin-bone, a stocking finished....