The Syndic--a man of enlarged views, and of fiery patriotism, the warmth of which was the more beneficent that he collected all the beams of it into one focus, and directed them to himself and his family--gave me (I had perhaps been comparing the School-bench and the School-stair to the _bench_ and the _ladder_, on which people are laid when about to be tortured) the best reply: "If a schoolmaster consume nothing but 30 reichsthalers;[52] if he annually purchase manufactured goods, according as Political Economists have calculated for each individual, namely, to the amount of 5 reichsthalers; and no more hundred-weights of victual than these assume, namely, 10; in short, if he live like a substantial wood-cutter, then the Devil must be in it if he cannot yearly lay by so much net profit as shall, in the long run, pay the interest of his entry debts." The Syndic must have failed to convince me at that time, since I afterwards told the Flachsenfingen Prince:[53] "Illustrious sir, you know not, but I do,--not a player in your Theatre would act the Schoolmaster in Engel's _Prodigal Son_, three nights running, for such a sum as every real Schoolmaster has to take for acting it all the days of the year. In Prussia, invalids are made Schoolmasters; with us, Schoolmasters are made invalids." .... But to our story! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his Crown-debts; but with quite a different purpose than the reader will guess, who has still the Schadeck testament in his head. In one word, he wanted to be Parson of Hukelum. To be a clergyman, and in the place where his cradle stood, and all the little gardens of his childhood, his mother also, and the grove of betrothment,--this was an open gate into a New Jerusalem, supposing even that the living had been nothing but a meagre penitentiary. The main point was, he might marry, if he were appointed. For, in the capacity of lank Conrector, supported only by the strengthening-girth of his waistcoat, and with emoluments whereby scarcely the purchase-money of a--purse was to be come at; in this way he was more like collecting wick and tallow for his burial torch than for his bridal one.