That since the terraqueous globe has moved or existed, there can ever have met a more lugubrious congress, or one more out of temper and enraged than this of Seven United Provinces, as it were, all dry and all confederated for the purpose of weeping,--I suppose no impartial judge will believe. At first some invaluable minutes were lost in pure confusion of mind, in astonishment, in peals of laughter: the congress found itself too suddenly translated into the condition of the dog to which, in the very moment of his keenest assault upon some object of his appetite, the fiend cried out--Halt! Whereupon, standing up as he was, on his hind legs, his teeth grinning, and snarling with the fury of desire, he halted and remained petrified:--from the graspings of hope, however distant, to the necessity of weeping for a wager, the congress found the transition too abrupt and harsh. One thing was evident to all--that for a shower that was to come down at such a full gallop, for a baptism of the eyes to be performed at such a hunting pace, it was vain to think of any pure water of grief: no hydraulics could effect this: yet in twenty-six minutes (four unfortunately were already gone), in one way or other, perhaps, some business might be done. 'Was there ever such a cursed act,' said the merchant Neupeter, 'such a price of buffoonery enjoined by any man of sense and discretion? For my part, I can't understand what the d----l it means.' However, he understood this much, that a house was by possibility floating in his purse upon a tear: and _that_ was enough to cause a violent irritation in his lachrymal glands. Knoll, the fiscal, was screwing up, twisting, and distorting his features pretty much in the style of a poor artisan on Saturday night, whom some fellow-workman is bar_ber_ously razoring and scraping by the light of a cobbler's candle: furious was his wrath at this abuse and profanation of the title _Last Will and Testament_: and at one time, poor soul! he was near enough to tears--of vexation. The wily bookseller, Pasvogel, without loss of time, sate down quietly to business: he ran through a cursory retrospect of all the works any ways moving or affecting that he had himself either published or sold on commission;--took a flying survey of the pathetic in general: and in this way of going to work, he had fair expectations that in the end he should brew something or other: as yet, however, he looked very much like a dog who is slowly licking off an emetic which the Parisian surgeon Demet has administered by smearing it on his nose: time--gentlemen, time was required for the operation.