After the Catechizing, I stept down to my wide-gowned and black-gowned gossip. The congregation gone, we clambered up to all high places, perused the plates on the pews--I took a lesson on the altar on its inscription incrusted with the _sediment of Time_ (I speak not metaphorically); I organed, my gossip managing the bellows; I mounted the pulpit, and was happy enough there to alight on one other rose-shoot, which in the farewell minute, I could still plant in the rose-garden of my Fixlein. For I descried aloft, on the back of a wooden Apostle, the name _Lavater_, which the Zurich Physiognomist had been pleased to leave on this sacred Torso in the course of his wayfaring. Fixlein did not know the hand, but I did, for I had seen it frequently in Flachsenfingen, not only on the tapestry of a Court Lady there, but also in his _Hand-Library_;[69] and met with it besides in many country churches, forming, as it were, the Directory and Address-Calendar of this wandering name, for Lavater likes to inscribe in pulpits, as a shepherd does in trees, the name of his beloved. I could now advise my gossip prudently to cut away the name, with the chip of wood containing it, from the back of the Apostle, and to preserve it carefully among his _curiosa_. On returning to the parsonage, I made for my hat and stick; but the design, as it were the projection and contour of a supper in the acacia-grove, had already been sketched by Thiennette. I declared that I would stay till evening, in case the young mother went out with us to the proposed meal.... and truly the Biographer at length got his way, all doctors' regulations notwithstanding.