[Note 32: Our Age (by some called the Paper Age, as if it were made from the rags of some better-dressed one) is improving in so far, as it now tears its rags rather into Bandages than into Papers; although, or because, the Rag-hacker (the Devil as they call it) will not altogether be at rest. Meanwhile, if Learned Heads transform themselves into Books, Crowned Heads transform and coin themselves into Government-paper: in Norway, according to the _Universal Indicator_, the people have even paper-houses; and in many good German States, the Exchequer Collegium (to say nothing of the Justice Collegium) keeps its own paper-mills, to furnish wrappage enough for the meal of its wind-mills. I could wish, however, that our Collegiums would take pattern from that Glass Manufactory at Madrid, in which (according to Baumgartner) there were indeed nineteen clerks stationed, but also eleven workmen.] Nor was I far wrong, I believe; for soon after this, he began quite coolly to inform the company, in which were a dwarf and a female, that, in his time, he had, not without enjoyment, run ten men through the body; had with great convenience hewed off a dozen men's arms; slowly split four heads, torn out two hearts, and more of the like sort; while none of them, otherwise persons of spirit, had in the least resisted: "but why?" added he, with a poisonous smile, and taking the hat from his odious bald pate: "I am invulnerable. Let any one of the company that chooses lay as much fire on my bare crown as he likes, I shall not mind it." My brother-in-law, the Dragoon, directly kindled his tinder-box, and put a heap of the burning matter on the Ratcatcher's pole; but the fellow stood it, as if it had been a mere picture of fire, and the two looked expectingly at one another; and the former smiled very foolishly, saying: "It was simply pleasant to him, like a good warming-plaster; for this was always the wintry region of his body." Here the Dragoon groped a little on the naked scull, and cried with amazement, that "it was as cold as a knee-pan." But now the fellow, to our horror, after some preparations, actually lifted off the quarter-scull and held it out to us, saying: "He had sawed it off a murderer, his own having accidentally been broken;" and withal explained, that the stabbing and arm-cutting he had talked of was to be understood as a jest, seeing he had merely done it in the character of Famulus at an Anatomical Theatre. However, the jester seemed to rise little in favour with any of us; and for my part, as he put his brain-lid and sham-scull on again, I thought to myself; "This dungbed-bell has changed its place indeed, but not the hemlock it was made to cover."