_similar_ folly; and laughs, in regard to his neighbor, at nothing but mankind and himself. The mother was not to be detained; she must off, this very night, to Hukelum, to give the Fräulein Thiennette at least some tidings of this glorious business.-- And now the World will bet a hundred to one, that I forthwith take biographical wax, and emboss such a wax-figure cabinet of the Actus itself as shall be single of its kind. But on Wednesday morning, while the hope-intoxicated Conrector was just about putting on his fine raiment, something knocked.---- It was the well-known servant of the Rittmeister, carrying the Hukelum Presentation for the Subrector _Füchslein_ in his pocket. To the last-named gentleman he had been sent with this call to the parsonage; but he had distinguished ill betwixt _Sub_ and _Con_rector; and had besides his own good reasons for directing his steps to the latter; for he thought, "Who can it be that gets it, but the parson that preached last Sunday, and that comes from the village, and is engaged to our Fräulein Thiennette, and to whom I brought a clock and a roll of ducats already?" That his Lordship could pass over his own godson never entered the man's head. Fixlein read the address of the Appointment: "To the Reverend the Parson _Fixlein_ of Hukelum." He naturally enough made the same mistake as the lackey; and broke up the Presentation as his own; and finding moreover in the body of the paper no special mention of persons, but only of a _Schul-unterbefehlshaber_, or School-undergovernor (instead of Subrector), he could not but persist in his error. Before I properly explain why the Rittmeister's Lawyer, the framer of the Presentation, had so designated a Subrector--we two, the reader and myself, will keep an eye for a moment on Fixlein's joyful salutations--on his gratefully-streaming eyes--on his full hands so laden with bounty--on the present of two ducats, which he drops into the hands of the mitre-bearer, as willingly as he will soon drop his own pedagogic office. Could he tell what to think (of the Rittmeister), or to write (to the same), or to table (for the lackey)? Did he not ask tidings of the noble health of his benefactor over and over, though the servant answered him with all distinctness at the very first? And was not this same man, who belonged to the nose-upturning, shoulder-shrugging, shoulder-knotted, toad-eating species of men, at last so moved by the joy which he had imparted, that he determined, on the spot, to bestow his presence on the new clergyman's School-Actus, though no person of quality whatever was to be there? Fixlein, in the first place, sealed his letter of thanks; and courteously invited this messenger of good news to visit him frequently in the Parsonage; and to call this evening, in passing, at his mother's, and give her a lecture for not staying last night, when she might have seen the Presentation from his Lordship arrive to-day.