This Hans was such a churl, that it is pity he had not been a
Hanoverian Post-boy; that so, by the Mandate of the Hanoverian
Government, enjoining on all its Post-officers an elegant style of
manners, he might have somewhat refined himself. To our poor Quintus,
whom no mortal disliked, and who again could hate no mortal, he alone
bore a grudge; simply because _Fixlein_ did not write himself
_Füchslein_, and had not chosen along with him to purchase a Patent of
Nobility. The Subrector, on this his Patent triumphal chariot, drawn by
a team of four specified ancestors, was obliged to see the Quintus, who
was related to him, clutching by the lackey-straps behind the carriage;
and to hear him, in the most despicable raiment, saying to the train:
"He that rides there is my cousin, and a mortal, and I always remind
him of it." The mild, compliant Quintus never noticed this large
wasp-poison-bag in the Subrector, but took it for a honey-bag; nay, by
his brotherly warmness, which the nobleman regarded as mere show, he
concreted these venomous juices into still feller consistency. The
Quintus, in his simplicity, took Füchslein's contempt for envy of his
pedagogic talents.
A Catherinenhof, an Annenhof, an Elizabethhof, Stralenhof, and
Petershof, all these Russian pleasure palaces, a man can dispense with
(if not despise), who has a room, in which on Christmas eve he walks
about with a Presentation in his hand. The new Conrector now longed for
nothing but--daylight; joys always (cares never) nibbled from him, like
sparrows, his sleep-grains; and to-night, moreover, the registrator of
his glad time, the clock-ape, drummed out every hour to him, which,
accordingly, he spent in gay dreaming, rather than in sound snoring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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