It was, then, on a magnificent St. James's day--and likewise on the birthday of the Provincial Director, Wehrfritz, who, however, had not received the title yet--that this same director--that was to be--had his chariot trundled out in the morning to ride to Pestitz, and see the Minister, and, as Factor of the Province, convert the _flail_ of the state, by way of experiment, into a _drill-plough_. He was a brisk, bustling man, to whom a day of furlough was longer than a day of drill to others, and to whom nothing made time pass heavily but pastime. "In the evening, however," he said to himself, "I'll make a good day of it, for it happens to be my birthday." His birthday present was to consist in making one; he proposed, namely, to bring home little Albano an Oesterlein's harpsichord out of his own purse,--little as there was in it,--and a music-master, into the bargain, at the desire of Don Gaspard. But why not, at the outset, explain all this in the clearest manner to the reader? Don Gaspard, then, in revising a scheme of education for Albano, had chosen that more attention should be paid to his bodily health than to mental superfetation; he thought the tree of knowledge should be grafted with the tree of life. Ah! whoever sacrifices health to wisdom has generally sacrificed wisdom too, and only _inborn_ not _acquired_ sickliness is profitable to head and heart. Accordingly, Albano had not to lug along, bending under the weight, the many-volumed encyclopædia of all sciences in his book-straps, but merely grammars. That is to say, the rector of the place,--named Wehmeier, better known by the title of Band-box-master,--after schooling the village youth for the usual number of hours, was accustomed to seek his fairest _Struve's spare hours_, his _Otia_ and _Noctes Hagianæ_, in teaching Albano, and driving into the mill-wheel axle of the everlastingly active boy--impelled by internal streams--alphabetic pins,--so as to make it the barrel of a speech-organ. Of course, however, Zesara soon wished to move something heavier than the key-board of languages; thus, for example, the language-organ barrel became, in a proper sense, the barrel of a hand-organ. For whole hours, without any special knowledge of counterpoint, would he practise on the parish organ (he knew neither note nor key, and stood hard, all through the piece, on the thundering pedal), trying his hand at the most horrible discords, before which the Enharmonics of all Piccinists must be struck dumb, only to bury himself so much the longer and deeper in the accidental prize of a chord. So, also, did his soul, full of sap, work off its energy in leaf-buds, as it were, and shoots and runners, by making pictures, clay statuary, sun-dials, and designs of all sorts, and even in the juristical rockery of his foster-father, for example, in Fabri's State Chancery, it sent its thirsty roots around and out over the dry leaves, as plants do often in herbariums.