Now, then, in this odious May-weather, he had merely, in his gray hussar-cloak,--at home, his night-gown,--and with shoes down at the heel, gone to the water-side; he had previously stripped himself at the house so as to be ready as soon as he should arrive at the bank. The mourning-company, who saw him go at his swift pace down to the water, and at last throw off everything and leap in, could not but believe the man meant to drown himself, and ran in a body to his bathing-place, not to let him do it. "Do not drown himself!" cried the mourning-company of blacks, while yet afar off. He just let them come on till he could discourse the matter to them somewhat nearer, in the following wise:--"I am yet open to conviction; I can hear reason, good folk, though I am already standing up to my neck in the water; but suffer yourselves to be correctly informed in this case, dear _Cherstens_ generally, for so Christians were called in the time of Charles. I am a poor Sacramentarian, and can hardly recollect what I have hitherto lived on, it was so bloody-desperate little. Whatever I have undertaken in this world, no blessing went with it, but it was all crab's-track backwards and forward. I set up, in Vienna, a neat little magazine of snipes' dung, but I made nothing out of it for want of snipes. I took hold on the other end, and hawked about in Carlsbad, for the lords and great ones, who are accustomed to set a picture upon every old stool and piece of trumpery, fine engravings for waste-paper and privy purposes, in order that, instead of the mere printed paper, they might have something tasty for consumption; but the whole set was left, a dead loss, on my hands, because the manner was too hard and not ideal enough. In London I prepared ready-made speeches (for I am a _litterateur_) to be used by men who are hanged, and yet would fain have something to say for themselves: I offered them to the richest parliamentary orators, and even knaves of booksellers, but came near having to use the speeches for myself. I would gladly have got my living by vomiting,[104] but that requires funds. I tried once to get a settlement as note-stand to a count's regiment, because it looks stupid enough on drill- and parade-days to see every one with a musical flap hanging on his shoulder, from which his next neighbor behind plays. I offered for a trifle to wear all the musicalia on my own person, and stand before them with the notes; but the first-lieutenant (who is at once in the regency and in the treasury) thought it would make the fifers laugh when they came to blow. Thus has it fared with me from time immemorial, dear Cherstens--but don't trample about on my precious cloak there! As ill luck would have it, I entered into wedlock with a lady of Vienna, who was endowed with melted seals;[105] her name was _Prænumerantia Elementaria Philanthropia_;[106] you don't know what this means in German,--a real hell-broom, who chased me, all heated, like a hunted