——To happiness——or am I to be the sport of fortune and slander—destined to be driven forth unconvicted——unheard——untouch’d——if so, why did I not stay at _Strasburg_, where justice—but I had sworn! Come, thou shalt drink—to _St. Nicolas_—O Julia!——What dost thou prick up thy ears at?——’tis nothing but a man, &c. The stranger rode on communing in this manner with his mule and Julia—till he arrived at his inn, where, as soon as he arrived, he alighted——saw his mule, as he had promised it, taken good care of——took off his cloak-bag, with his crimson-sattin breeches, &c. in it—called for an omelet to his supper, went to his bed about twelve o’clock, and in five minutes fell fast asleep. It was about the same hour when the tumult in _Strasburg_ being abated for that night,—the _Strasburgers_ had all got quietly into their beds—but not like the stranger, for the rest either of their minds or bodies; queen _Mab_, like an elf as she was, had taken the stranger’s nose, and without reduction of its bulk, had that night been at the pains of slitting and dividing it into as many noses of different cuts and fashions, as there were heads in _Strasburg_ to hold them. The abbess of _Quedlingberg_, who with the four great dignitaries of her chapter, the prioress, the deaness, the sub-chantress, and senior canonness, had that week come to _Strasburg_ to consult the university upon a case of conscience relating to their placket- holes——was ill all the night. The courteous stranger’s nose had got perched upon the top of the pineal gland of her brain, and made such rousing work in the fancies of the four great dignitaries of her chapter, they could not get a wink of sleep the whole night thro’ for it——there was no keeping a limb still amongst them——in short, they got up like so many ghosts. The penitentiaries of the third order of saint _Francis_——the nuns of mount _Calvary_——the _Præmonstratenses_——the _Clunienses_[9]——the _Carthusians_, and all the severer orders of nuns, who lay that night in blankets or hair-cloth, were still in a worse condition than the abbess of _Quedlingberg_—by tumbling and tossing, and tossing and tumbling from one side of their beds to the other the whole night long——the several sisterhoods had scratch’d and maul’d themselves all to death——they got out of their beds almost flay’d alive—every body thought saint _Antony_ had visited them for probation with his fire——they had never once, in short, shut their eyes the whole night long from vespers to matins. The nuns of saint _Ursula_ acted the wisest—they never attempted to go to bed at all. The dean of _Strasburg_, the prebendaries, the capitulars and domiciliars (capitularly assembled in the morning to consider the case of butter’d buns) all wished they had followed the nuns of saint _Ursula_’s example.——