The time ere Gaspard's messenger came to take him away was to the detained youth an eternity, and the village a prison; it shrivelled up to the household-buildings of a convent. The hidden plan of his life, written, however, by encaustic into his brain, was, as with all such young men, this, to be and do nothing more than--everything; that is to say, to bless, to glorify, and to enlighten at once himself and a country,--to be a Frederick II. upon the throne; in other words, a storm-cloud, which should contain thunders of excommunication for the sinner, electrical light for the deaf, blind, and lame, showers for the insects, and warm drops for thirsty flowers, hail for enemies, an attraction for everything, for leaves and dust, and a rainbow for the end. Now, as he could not succeed Frederick II., he proposes to be hereafter minister at least,--especially as Wehrfritz made so much out of this by-sceptre,--this offshoot and chip of the mother sceptre,--and in his spare hours a great poet and philosopher withal. I shall be delighted, Count, if thou shouldst become a second Frederick, the second and only; my book will profit by it and I myself mould my future thereby as a rare historiographer, compounded of Zenophon, Curtius, and Voltaire! 27. CYCLE. Zesara will never forget the spring evening, on which he saw a passenger in a greatcoat,--a little limping and covered with brown travelling-paint, to which his white eyeballs formed a shining contrast,--wade across the shallow brook beside the high bridge, and how, further, the passenger took with him a watch-man's cane which the then Lieutenant of the Beggar's Police had just leaned against his house-door, a vicarious fellow-laborer, and handed the said cane, on his way, to a cripple, with the words: "Old man, I have nothing by me smaller than the stick. If anybody asks you about it, just tell them you are keeping guard in the village against the confounded beggar tribe, but have not eyes enough." At the same time our pilgrim reached out to a rector's little son, who needed it for about three minutes, his pocket-handkerchief. It was of course our old Librarian by title, Schoppe, whom Don Gaspard had despatched with the note of invitation for Isola Bella. Albano's delight was so great, that only some days later did the youth mistake the odd humorist, whereas the latter soon correctly weighed the light, ardent, still wildling. Did it not fare still worse with the old Provincial Director, who, merely because he rated the _body_ politic of the Empire as high as if he were the installed _soul_ therein, upon Schoppe's sallies against the constitution, came out in a patriotic fury: "Sir," said he, in an excited manner, "even if there were a flaw anywhere, still a true German would be bound to maintain a profound silence on the subject, unless he can help the matter, especially in such cursed times."