It is historically certain that both of them supped this evening; and
that instead of the whole dinner fragments which to-morrow might
themselves represent a dinner, nothing but the cake-offering or pudding
was laid upon the altar of the table. The mother, who for her own child
would willingly have neglected not herself only, but all other people,
now made a motion that to the Quintaner, who was sporting out of doors
and baiting a bird instead of himself, there should no crumb of the
precious pastry be given, but only table-bread without the crust. But
the Schoolman had a Christian disposition, and said that it was Sunday,
and the young man liked something delicate to eat as well as he.
Fixlein--the counterpart of great men and geniuses--was inclined to
treat, to gift, to gratify a serving housemate, rather than a man who
is for the first time passing through the gate, and at the next
post-stage will forget both his hospitable landlord and the last
postmaster. On the whole, our Quintus had a touch of honor in him, and
notwithstanding his thrift and sacred regard for money, he willingly
gave it away in cases of honor, and unwillingly in cases of
overpowering sympathy, which too painfully filled the cavities of his
heart, and emptied those of his purse. Whilst the Quintaner was
exercising the _jus compascui_ on the cake, and six arms were
peacefully resting on Thiennette's free-table, Fixlein read to himself
and the company the Flachsenfingen Address-calendar; any higher thing,
except Meusel's _Gelehrtes Deutschland_,[39] he could not figure; the
Kammerherrs and Raths of the Calendar went tickling over his tongue
like the raisins of the cake; and of the more rich church-livings he,
by reading, as it were levied a tithe.
He purposely remained his own Edition in Sunday Wove-paper; I mean, he
did not lay away his Sunday coat, even when the Prayer-bell tolled; for
he had still much to do.
After supper he was just about visiting the Fräulein, when he descried
her in person, like a lily dipped in the red twilight, in the Castle
garden, whose western limit his house constituted, the southern one
being the Chinese wall of the Castle.... By the way, how I got to the
knowledge of all this, what Letter-boxes are, whether I myself was ever
there, &c., &c.--the whole of this shall, upon my life, be soon and
faithfully communicated to the reader, and that too in the present
Book.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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