"Were it permitted me," Wehmeier began, "I would now communicate to Mr. Count a fact in regard to Mr. Librarian, which, perhaps--such is at least my opinion--is as _frappant_ as many another. The school-house, as you certainly still well remember, stands close to the church." Thereupon he related, in a long narrative, the following: "Once, at dead of night, he heard the organ going. He listened at the church door, and distinctly heard Schoppe sing and play a short stanza of a popular hymn. Thereupon the said Schoppe came down, with a loud noise, from the choir, and mounted the pulpit, and commenced an occasional sermon to himself with the words: 'My devout hearer and friend in Christ.' In the exordium he touched upon the silent, but unhappily so fleeting bliss which one enjoyed _before_ life, although not according to correct Homiletic principles, since the second part almost repeated the introduction. Thereupon he sang a pulpit stanza to himself, and taking from the 3d chapter of Job, where the writer shows the happiness of non-existence, the 26th verse as his text, which reads thus: 'Was I not in safety, had I not rest, was I not quiet? Yet trouble came,'[111]--he proposed to himself as his theme the joys and sorrows of a Christian; in the first part the sorrows, in the second the joys. Thereupon he crowded together concisely, but in a droll style and speech, and yet with Scriptural expressions, too, all the misery and distress on earth,--under which he enumerated singular things: long sermons, the two poles, ugly faces, compliments, games, and the world's stupidity. Thereupon he passed over abruptly to the consolation in the second part, and described the future joys of a Christian, which, as he blasphemously said, consisted in a heavenly ascension into future nothingness, in the death after death, in an eternal deliverance from self. Then (shocking it was to hear it) he addressed the neighboring dead down below under the church and in the princely vault, and asked, whether they had aught to complain of? 'Arise,' said he; 'seat yourselves in the pews, and open your eyes, in case they are wet with weeping. But they are drier than your dust. O how still and lovely lies the infinite past world, swathed in its own shadow, softly laid on the bed of its own ashes, without a single remaining dream-limb upon which a wound can be inflicted. Swift, old Swift, thou who once in thy latter days wast not so very much in thy head, and didst read through, every birthday, the whole chapter from which the text of our harvest sermon is taken,--Swift, how contented thou now art and entirely restored, the hatred of thy bosom burnt out, the round pearl, thy Self, eaten up, at last, and dissolved in the hot tear of life, and the tear alone stands there sparkling! And thou, too, hadst once preached before the Sexton like me!' Here Schoppe wept, and excused himself for his emotion, God knows before whom. Thereupon he passed to the practical improvement,