At last, however, I was forced to bite or cut the coloquinta-apple, and give her the half of it; I mean the news of my rejected petition for the Catechetical Professorship. Wishing to spare this joyful heart the rudeness of the whole truth, and to subtract something from a heavy burden, more fit for the shoulders of a man, I began: "Bergelchen, the Professorship affair is taking another, though still a good enough course; the General, whom may the Devil and his Grandmother teach sense, will not be taken except by storm; and storm he shall have, as certainly as I have on my nightcap." "Then thou art nothing yet?" inquired she. "For the moment, indeed, not!" answered I. ------------------------ 89. In times of misfortune, the Ancients supported themselves with Philosophy or Christianity; the moderns again (for example, in the reign of Terror) take to Pleasure; as the wounded Buffalo, for bandage and salve, rolls himself in the mire. 181. God be thanked that we live nowhere forever except in Hell or Heaven; on Earth otherwise we should grow to be the veriest rascals, and the World a House of Incurables, for want of the dog-doctor (the Hangman), and the issue-cord (on the Gallows), and the sulphur and chalybeate medicines (on Battle-fields). So that we too find our gigantic moral force dependent on the _Debt of Nature_ which we have to pay, exactly as your politicians (for example, the author of the _New Leviathan_) demonstrate that the English have their _National Debt_ to thank for their superiority. ------------------------ "But before Saturday night?" said she. "Not quite," said I. "Then am I sore stricken, and could leap out of the window," said she, and turned away her rosy face, to hide its wet eyes, and was silent very long. Then, with painfully quivering voice, she began: "Good Christ, stand by me at Neusattel on Sunday, when these high-prancing prideful dames look at me in church, and I grow scarlet for shame!" Here in sympathetic woe I sprang out of bed to the dear soul, over whose brightly blooming cheeks warm tears were rolling, and cried: "Thou true heart, do not tear me in pieces so! May I die, if yet in these dog-days I become not all and everything that thou wishest! Speak, wilt thou be Mining-räthin, Build-räthin, Court-räthin, War-räthin, Chamber-räthin, Commerce-räthin, Legations-räthin, or Devil and his Dam's räthin; I am here, and will buy it, and be it. To-morrow I send riding posts to Saxony and Hessia, to Prussia and Russia, to Friesland and Katzenellenbogen, and demand patents. Nay, I will carry matters further than another, and be all things at once, Flachsenfingen Court-rath, Scheerau Excise-rath, Haarhaar Building-rath, Pestitz[76] Chamber-rath (for we have the cash); and thus, alone and singlehanded, represent with one _podex_ and _corpus_ a whole Rath-session of select Raths; and stand, a complete Legion of Honor, on one single pair of legs; the like no man ever did.