Seven thousand coaches (_Slawkenbergius_ must certainly have made some mistake in his numerical characters) 7000 coaches----15,000 single-horse chairs--20,000 waggons, crowded as full as they could all hold with senators, counsellors, syndicks--beguines, widows, wives, virgins, canons, concubines, all in their coaches --The abbess of _Quedlingberg_, with the prioress, the deaness and sub-chantress, leading the procession in one coach, and the dean of _Strasburg_, with the four great dignitaries of his chapter, on her left-hand--the rest following higglety-pigglety as they could; some on horseback----some on foot----some led----some driven----some down the _Rhine_----some this way----some that----all set out at sun-rise to meet the courteous stranger on the road. 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 _Peripetia_ of a DRAMA, but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential and integrant parts of it----it has its _Protasis_, _Epitasis_, _Catastasis_, its _Catastrophe_ or _Peripetia_ 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 decads, 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 sentinel, 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 _Peripetia_ 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.