How happy was it that in the midst of my Pontac, before shaving, I had written out the duplicate of this paper; and therefore—simply on the principle that you should always keep a second wooden leg packed into your knapsack when you have the first on your body—and out of fear that if the original petition chanced to drop from me in the way between the Tiger and Schabacker's, my whole journey and hope would melt into water—and therefore, I say, having stuck the repeating work of that original paper into my pocket, I had, in any case, something to hand in, and that something truly a Ditto. I handed it in.
Unhappily six o'clock was already past. The lackey, however, did not keep me long waiting; but returned with—I may say, the text of this whole Circular—the almost rude answer (which you, my Friends, out of regard for me and Schabacker, will not divulge) that: "In case I were the Attila Schmelzle of Schabacker's Regiment, I might lift my pigeon-liver flag again, and fly to the Devil, as I did at Pimpelstadt." Another man would have dropt dead on the spot: I, however, walked quite stoutly off, answering the fellow: "With great pleasure indeed, I fly to the Devil; and so Devil a fly I care." On the road home I examined myself whether it had not been the Pontac that spoke out of me (though the very examination contradicted this, for Pontac never examines); but I found that nothing but I, my heart, my courage perhaps, had spoken: and why, after all, any whimpering? Does not the patrimony of my good wife endow me better than ten Catechetical Professorships? And has she not furnished all the corners of my book of Life with so many golden clasps, that I can open it forever without wearing it? Let henhearts cackle and pip; I flapped my pinions, and said: "Dash boldly through it, come what may!" I
136. If you mount too high above your time, your ears (on the side of Fame) are little better off than if you sink too deep below it: in truth, Charles up in his Balloon, and Halley down in his Diving-bell, felt equally the same strange pain in their ears.
