I come now to the Privy-Legation's-Counsellor, Von Hafenreffer, who is the subject of my promised _exposé of fact_. It must have been formerly learned from the 45th Dog-Post-Day, who governs Flachsenfingen, namely, my revered father. This striking promotion of mine was, at the bottom, more a step than a spring; for I was, previously, no less than a Jurist, consequently the germ or bud of an embryo Doctor _utriusque_, and consequently a nobleman, since in the Doctor the whole spawn and yolk of the Knight lies; therefore the former, as well as the latter, when anything chances by, lives upon his saddle or stirrup, although less in a robber's castle than in a robber's chamber; I have, therefore, since the preferment, changed less myself than my castle of residence;--the paternal seat in Flachsenfingen is at present my own. I care not now to eat my sugar-cake at court with sin,--although one earns sugar-cake and manna more comfortably than ship-bread,--but I represent, in order to make a profit upon my adventure, the whole Flachsenfingen Department of Foreign Affairs at home here in the castle, together with the requisite deciphering chancery. This, then, is what we shall do: we have a Procurator in Vienna, two Residents in five Imperial cities, a Secretary of the Comitia in Ratisbon under the Cross-Bench,[21] three Chancery-clerks of the circle, and an Envoyé-Plenipotentiary at a well-known and considerable court not far from Hohenfliess, who is no other than the aforementioned Mr. Feudal Provost Von Hafenreffer. To the latter my father has even advanced a complete silver-service, which we lend him, till he shall have received his recall, because it is for our own interest that a Flachsenfingen ambassador should, while abroad, do extraordinary honor, by his extravagance, to the princely hat or coronet of Flachsenfingen. Now it is no joke to stand on such a post as this of mine; the whole legation-writing-and-reading company write to me under frank, the _chiffre banal_ and the _chiffre déchiffrant_ are in my hands, and I understand, as it seems to me, the whole mess. It is unutterable, all that I thus learn: it could not be read by men nor drawn by horses, if I were disposed to hatch, biographically, and feed and reel off the whole silk-worm seed of novels, which the corps of ambassadors send me every post-day in closely-sealed packages. Yes (to use another metaphor), the biographical timber which my float-inspection launches for me from up above,--now into the Elbe, now into the Saale, now into the Danube,--stands already so high before me in the ship-yard, that I could not use it up, supposing I drove on the æsthetical building of my biographical fools'-ships, masquerade-balls, and enchanted castles, day and night, year out and year in, and never danced, nor rode, nor spoke, nor sneezed again in my life....