At his very rising he finds spangles on the table; sacred spangles from the gold-leaf and silver-leaf, with which the Christ-child[44] has been emblazoning and coating his apples and nuts, the presents of the night.--On the mint-balance of joy, this metallic foam pulls heavier than the golden calves, and golden Pythagoras'-legs, and golden Philistine-mice of wealthier capitalists.--Then came his mother, bringing him both Christianity and clothes: for in drawing on his trousers, she easily recapitulated the Ten Commandments, and, in tying his garters, the Apostles' Creed. So soon as candle-light was over, and day-light come, he clambers to the arm of the settle, and then measures the nocturnal growth of the yellow wiry grove of Christmas-Birch; and devotes far less attention than usual to the little white winter-flowerage, which the seeds shaken from the bird-cage are sending forth in the wet joints of the window-panes.--I nowise grudge J. J. Rousseau his _Flora Petrinsularis_;[45] but let him also allow our Quintus his _Window-flora_.--There was no such thing as school all day; so he had time enough to seek his Butcher (his brother), and commence (when could there be finer frost for it?) the slaughtering of their winter-meat. Some days before, the brother, at the peril of his life and of a cudgelling, had caught their stalled-beast--so they called the sparrow--under a window-sill in the Castle. Their slaughtering wants not an axe (of wood), nor puddings, nor potted meat.--About three o'clock the old Gardener, whom neighbours have to call the Professor of Gardening, takes his place on his large chair, with his Cologne tobacco-pipe; and after this no mortal shall work a stroke. He tells nothing but lies; of the aeronautic Christ-child, and the jingling Ruprecht with his bells. In the dusk, our little Quintus takes an apple; divides it into all the figures of stereometry, and spreads the fragments in two heaps on the table: then as the lighted candle enters, he starts up in amazement at the unexpected present, and says to his brother: "Look what the good Christ-child has given thee and me; and I saw one of his wings glittering." And for this same glittering he himself lies in wait the whole evening. [44] These antique Christmas festivities Richter describes with equal _gusto_ in another work (_Briefe und Zukuenftige Lebenslemf_); where the Christ-child (falsely reported to the young ones, to have been seen flying through the air, with gold wings); the Birch-bough fixed in a corner of the room, and by him made to grow; the fruit, of gilt sweetmeats, apples, nuts, which (for good boys) it suddenly produces, &c. &c. are specified with the same fidelity as here.--ED. [45] Which he purposed to make for his Island of St. Pierre in the Bienne Lake.