About eight o'clock,--here he walks chiefly by the chronicle of his letter-drawer,--both of them, with necks almost excoriated with washing, and in clean linen, and in universal anxiety lest the Holy Christ-child find them up, are put to bed. What a magic night!--What tumult of dreaming hopes!--The populous, motley, glittering cave of Fancy opens itself, in the length of the night, and in the exhaustion of dreamy effort, still darker and darker, fuller and more grotesque; but the awakening gives back to the thirsty heart its hopes. All accidental tones, the cries of animals, of watchmen, are, for the timidly devout Fancy, sounds out of Heaven; singing voices of Angels in the air, church-music of the morning worship. Ah! it was not the mere Lubberland of sweetmeats and playthings which then, with its perspective, stormed like a river of joy against the chambers of our hearts; and which yet, in the moonlight of memory, with its dusky landscapes, melts our souls in sweetness. Ah! this was it, that then for our boundless wishes there were still boundless hopes: but now reality is round us, and the wishes are all that we have left! At last came rapid lights from the neighbourhood playing through the window on the walls, and the Christmas trumpets, and the crowing from the steeple, hurries both the boys from their bed. With their clothes in their hands, without fear for the darkness, without feeling for the morning-frost, rushing, intoxicated, shouting, they hurry down-stairs into the dark room. Fancy riots in the pastry and fruit-perfume of the still eclipsed treasures, and paints her air-castles by the glimmering of the Hesperides-fruit with which the Birch-tree is loaded. While their mother strikes a light, the falling sparks sportfully open and shroud the dainties on the table, and the many-coloured grove on the wall; and a single atom of that fire bears on it a hanging garden of Eden.---- --On a sudden all grew light; and the Quintus got--the Conrectorship, and a table-clock. FOURTH LETTER-BOX. _Office-brokage. Discovery of the promised Secret. Hans van Fuechslein._ For while the Quintus, in his vapoury chamber, was thus running over the sounding-board of his early years, the Rathsdiener, or City-officer, entered with a lantern and the Presentation; and behind him the courier of the Frau von Aufhammer with a note and a table-clock. The Rittmeisterinn had transformed her payment for the Dog-days sickbed-exhortation into a Christmas present; which consisted, _first_, of a table-clock, with a wooden ape thereon, starting out when the hours struck, and drumming along with every stroke; _secondly_, of the Conrectorate, which she had procured for him.