Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale——I say _Catastrophe_ (cries _Slawkenbergius_) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly disposed, not only rejoiceth (_gaudet_) in the _Catastrophe_ and _Peripeitia_ of a DRAMA, but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential and integrant parts of it——it has its _Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis_, its _Catastrophe_ or _Peripeitia_ growing one out of the other in it, in the order _Aristotle_ first planted them——without which a tale had better never be told at all, says _Slawkenbergius_, but be kept to a man’s self. In all my ten tales, in all my ten decades, have I _Slawkenbergius_ tied down every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have done this of the stranger and his nose. ——From his first parley with the centinel, to his leaving the city of _Strasburg_, after pulling off his crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is the _Protasis_ or first entrance——where the characters of the _Personæ Dramatis_ are just touched in, and the subject slightly begun. The _Epitasis_, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and heightened, till it arrives at its state or height called the _Catastasis_, and which usually takes up the 2d and 3d act, is included within that busy period of my tale, betwixt the first night’s uproar about the nose, to the conclusion of the trumpeter’s wife’s lectures upon it in the middle of the grand parade: and from the first embarking of the learned in the dispute—to the doctors finally sailing away, and leaving the _Strasburgers_ upon the beach in distress, is the _Catastasis_ or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their bursting forth in the fifth act. This commences with the setting out of the _Strasburgers_ in the _Frankfort_ road, and terminates in unwinding the labyrinth and bringing the hero out of a state of agitation (as _Aristotle_ calls it) to a state of rest and quietness. This, says _Hafen Slawkenbergius_, constitutes the _Catastrophe_ or _Peripeitia_ of my tale—and that is the part of it I am going to relate. We left the stranger behind the curtain asleep——he enters now upon the stage. —What dost thou prick up thy ears at?—’tis nothing but a man upon a horse——was the last word the stranger uttered to his mule. It was not proper then to tell the reader, that the mule took his master’s word for it; and without any more _ifs_ or _ands_, let the traveller and his horse pass by.