dead--had constantly been in the habit of searching with mine-lamps and pokers into all the corners of Eva's heart; and had in consequence long ago observed--what the Quintus never did--that she had a mind for the said Quintus. Young women conceal their sorrows more easily than their joys: today at the mention of this Conrectorate, Eva had become unusually _red_. When she went after breakfast to bring in coffee, which the Ward had to drink down to the grounds: "I beat Eva to death if she but look at him," said he. Then addressing Fixlein: "Hear you, Ward, did you never cast an eye on my Eva? She can suffer you, and if you want her, you get her; but _we_ have done with one another: for a learned man needs quite another sort of thing." "Herr Regiments-Quartermaster," said Fixlein (for this post Steinberger filled in the provincial Militia), "such a match were far too rich, at any rate, for a Schoolman." The Quartermaster nodded fifty times; and then said to Eva, as she returned,--at the same time taking down from the shelf a wooden crook, on which he used to rack out and suspend his slain calves: "Stop!--Hark, dost wish the present Herr Conrector here for thy husband?" "Ah, good Heaven!" said Eva. "Mayst wish him or not," continued the Flesher; "with this crook, thy father knocks thy brains out, if thou but think of a learned man. Now make his coffee." And so by the dissevering stroke of this wooden crook was a love easily smitten asunder, which in a higher rank, by such cutting through it with the sword, would only have foamed and hissed the keenlier. Fixlein might now, at any hour he liked, lay hold of fifty florins Frankish, and clutch the pedagogic sceptre, and become coadjutor of the Rector, that is, Conrector. We may assert, that it is with debts, as with proportions in Architecture; of which Wolf has shown that those are the best, which can be expressed in the smallest numbers. Nevertheless, the Quartermaster cheerfully took learned men under his arm: for the notion that his debtor would decease in his thirty-second year, and that so Death, as creditor in the first rank, must be paid his Debt of Nature, before the other creditors could come forward with their debts--this notion he named stuff and oldwifery; he was neither superstitious nor fanatical, and he walked by firm principles of action, such as the common man much oftener has than your vapouring man of letters, or your empty dainty man of rank. * * * * *