17. The Bed of Honor, since so frequently whole regiments lie on it, and receive their last unction, and last honor but one, really ought from time to time be new-filled, beaten, and sunned.
"Oh!" answered I, "misfortune may conceal itself like a scorpion in any corner; I might say, we are like children, who, looking at their gayly painted toy-box, soon pull off the lid, and, pop! out springs a mouse who has young ones."
"Mouse, mouse!" said he, stepping up and down. "But, good brother, it is five o'clock; and you will find, when you return, that all looks exactly as it does to-day; the dog like the dog, and my sister like a pretty woman; _allons donc_!" It was purely his blame that I, fearing his misconceptions, had not previously made a sort of testament.
120. Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he dwells in the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him.
I now packed in two different sorts of medicines, heating as well as cooling, against two different possibilities; also my old splints for arm or leg breakages, in case the coach overset; and (out of foresight) two times the money I was likely to need. Only here I could have wished, so uncertain is the stowage of such things, that I had been an Ape with cheek-pouches, or some sort of Opossum with a natural bag, that so I might have reposited these necessaries of existence in pockets which were sensitive. Shaving is a task I always go through before setting out on journeys; having a rational mistrust against stranger bloodthirsty barbers; but, on this occasion, I retained my beard; since, however close shaved, it would have grown again by the road to such a length that I could have fronted no Minister and General with it.
With a vehement emotion, I threw myself on the pith-heart of my Berga, and with a still more vehement one, tore myself away; in her, however, this our first marriage-separation seemed to produce less lamentation than triumph, less consternation than rejoicing; simply because she turned her eye not half so much on the parting, as on the meeting, and the journey after me, and the wonders of the Fair. Yet she threw and hung herself on my somewhat long and thin neck and body, almost painfully, being, indeed, a too fleshy and weighty load, and said to me: "Whisk thee off quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy head with no cares by the way, thou singular man! A whiff or two of ill luck we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar. And for thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to her brother, "I leave my Attel on thy soul; thou well knowest, thou wild fly, what I wilt do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in the lurch." Her meaning here was good, and I could not take it ill; to you, also, my Friends, her wealth and her open-heartedness are nothing new.