They possessed the true religious virtues, ardent patriotism, limitless charity, and styled themselves as the knights and saviours of all those who were poor, all those who were downtrodden and oppressed. They imbued the reader with respect and admiration; but all adversaries of these glorious men were to be despised, and in particular the authorities whose designs were foiled again and again. And most of all, there was this fullness of life, of action, of movement, which dominated these books! On every page, something happened, something most interesting, some great, hard, daring deed, which was to be admired. What, on the other hand, had happened in all those books I had read up to now? What happened in the minister's tracts? In his boring, meaningless scriptures for the youth? And what happened in those otherwise rather good and useful books of the principal? They described great, large, and distant countries, but nothing happened in all of this. They told of foreign people and nations, but they did not move, they did nothing. This was all just geography, just geography, nothing else; any kind of a plot was missing. And just ethnography, just ethnography; but the puppets stood still. There was no God, no man, and also no devil, to take the cross with the strings into his hand and to give these dead characters life! And yet, there is one person, who absolutely demands this life, this is the reader. And this is the one, upon whom everything depends, because he alone is the one the books are written for. The reader's soul will turn away from any kind of lack of movement, because this means this soul's death. What a wealth of life was there, on the other hand, in this rental library! And how was it tuned to the peculiarities and requirements of the one who would take such a book into his hands! As soon as he would feel a wish while reading, it is already fulfilled. And what an admirable, unchanging justice rules the scene. Every good, honourable person, may he be the captain of the robbers ten times over, is invariably rewarded. And every evil person, every sinner, may he be ten times a king, general, bishop, or public prosecutor, is invariably punished. This is true justice; this is divine justice! No matter how much Goethe may write in poetry and prose about the glory and irrevocability of divine and human law, he is nonetheless wrong! Only his brother-in-law Vulpius is right, for he has created that Rinaldo Rinaldini!