"Here is the place, the town," said I in secret, "where to-day much and for many years is to be determined, where thou this evening, about five o'clock, art to present thy petition and thyself. May it prosper! May it be successful! Let Flätz, this arena of thy little efforts among the rest, become a building-space for fair castles and air-castles to two hearts, thy own and thy Berga's!"
No mortal in my situation at this Tiger-hotel would have triumphed much in his more immediate prospects. I, as the only man known to me, especially in the way of love (of the runaway Dragoon anon!), looked out from the windows of the overflowing Inn, and down on the rushing sea of marketers, and very soon began to reflect, that, except Heaven and the rascals and murderers, none knew how many of the latter two classes were floating among the tide; purposing, perhaps, to lay hold of the most innocent strangers, and in part cut their purses, in part their throats. My situation had a special circumstance against it. My brother-in-law, who still comes plump out with everything, had mentioned that I was to put up at the Tiger. O Heaven! when will such people learn to be secret, and to cover even the meanest pettinesses of life under mantles and veils, were it only that a silly mouse may as often give birth to a mountain as a mountain to a mouse! The whole rabble of the stagecoach stopped at the Tiger; the Harlot, the Rat-catcher, _Jean Pierre_, the Giant, who had dismounted at the Gate of the town, and carrying the huge block-head of the Dwarf on his shoulders as his own (cloaking over the deception by his cloak), had thus, like a ninny, exhibited himself gratis by half a dwarf more gigantic than he could be seen for money.
158. Governments should not too often change the penny-trumps and child's drums of the Poets for the regimental trumpet and fire-drum; on the other hand, good subjects should regard many a princely drum-tendency simply as a disease, in which the patient, by air insinuating under the skin, has got dreadfully swoln.
And now for each of the Passengers, the question was how he could make the Tiger, the heraldic emblem of the Inn, his prototype; and so what lamb he might suck the blood of, and tear in pieces, and devour. My brother-in-law too left me, having gone in quest of some horse-dealer; but he retained the chamber next mine for his sister; this, it appeared, was to denote attention on his part. I remained solitary, left to my own intrepidity and force of purpose.