Melted into sensibility, I said: "Now, Berga, if there be a reunion appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or in Flätz; and I hope in God, the latter." With these words, we whirled stoutly away. I looked round through the back-window of the coach at my good little village of Neusattel, and it seemed to me, in my melting mood, as if its steeples were rising aloft like an epitaphium over my life, or over my body, perhaps to return a lifeless corpse. "How will it all be," thought I, "when thou at last, after two or three days, comest back?" And now I noticed my Bergelchen looking after us from the garret-window; I leaned far out from the coach-door, and her falcon eye instantly distinguished my head; kiss on kiss she threw with both hands after the carriage, as it rolled down into the valley. "Thou true-hearted wife," thought I, "how is thy lowly birth, by thy spiritual new-birth, made forgetable, nay, remarkable!" ------------------------ 1. The more Weakness the more Lying. Force goes straight; any cannon-ball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked. ------------------------ I must confess, the assemblage and conversational picnic of the stage-coach was much less to my taste; the whole of them suspicious, unknown rabble, whom (as markets usually do) the Flätz cattle-market was alluring by its scent. I dislike becoming acquainted with strangers; not so my brother-in-law, the Dragoon; who now, as he always does, had in a few minutes elbowed himself into close quarters with the whole ragamuffin posse of them. Beside me sat a person, who, in all human probability, was a Harlot; on her breast a Dwarf intending to exhibit himself at the Fair; on the other side was a Rat-catcher gazing at me; and a Blind Passenger,[73] in a red mantle, had joined us down in the valley. No one of them, except my brother-in-law, pleased me. That rascals among these people would not study me and my properties and accidents, to entangle me in their snares, no man could be my surety. In strange places, I even, out of prudence, avoid looking long up at any jail-window; because some losel, sitting behind the bars, may in a moment call down out of mere malice: "How goes it, comrade Schmelzle?" or, further, because any lurking catchpole may fancy I am planning a rescue for some confederate above. From another sort of prudence, little different from this, I also make a point of never turning round when any booby calls, Thief! after me. ------------------------ 88. Epictetus advises us to travel, because our old acquaintances, by the influence of shame, impede our transition to higher virtues; as a bashful man will rather lay aside his provincial accent in some foreign quarter, and then return wholly purified to his own countrymen. In our days, people of rank and virtue follow this advice, but inversely; and travel because their old acquaintances, by the influence of shame, would too much deter them from new sins. ------------------------