"Oh!" answered I, "misfortune may conceal itself like a scorpion in any
corner; I might say, we are like children, who, looking at their gayly
painted toy-box, soon pull off the lid, and, pop! out springs a mouse
who has young ones."
"Mouse, mouse!" said he, stepping up and down. "But, good brother, it
is five o'clock; and you will find, when you return, that all looks
exactly as it does to-day; the dog like the dog, and my sister like a
pretty woman; _allons donc_!" It was purely his blame that I, fearing
his misconceptions, had not previously made a sort of testament.
------------------------
120. Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he dwells in
the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him.
------------------------
I now packed in two different sorts of medicines, heating as well as
cooling, against two different possibilities; also my old splints for
arm or leg breakages, in case the coach overset; and (out of foresight)
two times the money I was likely to need. Only here I could have
wished, so uncertain is the stowage of such things, that I had been an
Ape with cheek-pouches, or some sort of Opossum with a natural bag,
that so I might have reposited these necessaries of existence in
pockets which were sensitive. Shaving is a task I always go through
before setting out on journeys; having a rational mistrust against
stranger bloodthirsty barbers; but, on this occasion, I retained my
beard; since, however close shaved, it would have grown again by the
road to such a length that I could have fronted no Minister and General
with it.
With a vehement emotion, I threw myself on the pith-heart of my Berga,
and with a still more vehement one, tore myself away; in her, however,
this our first marriage-separation seemed to produce less lamentation
than triumph, less consternation than rejoicing; simply because she
turned her eye not half so much on the parting, as on the meeting, and
the journey after me, and the wonders of the Fair. Yet she threw and
hung herself on my somewhat long and thin neck and body, almost
painfully, being, indeed, a too fleshy and weighty load, and said to
me: "Whisk thee off quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy
head with no cares by the way, thou singular man! A whiff or two of ill
luck we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar.
And for thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to her
brother, "I leave my Attel on thy soul; thou well knowest, thou wild
fly, what I wilt do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in
the lurch." Her meaning here was good, and I could not take it ill; to
you, also, my Friends, her wealth and her open-heartedness are nothing
new.
------------------------
8. Culture makes whole lands, for instance Germany, Gaul, and others,
physically warmer, but spiritually colder.
------------------------
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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