influential of the two, looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he
seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdrockh open his
mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides
his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at
every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a
cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion,
and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, _Bravo! Das
glaub' ich_; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if
Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his
self-seclusion, and godlike indifference, there was no symptom, then might
Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could
knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred.

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufelsdrockh, at the
time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and meditate.
Here, perched up in his high Wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in solitude,
outwatching the Bear, it was that the indomitable Inquirer fought all his
battles with Dulness and Darkness; here, in all probability, that he wrote
this surprising Volume on _Clothes_. Additional particulars: of his age,
which was of that standing middle sort you could only guess at; of his wide
surtout; the color of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed
steeple-hat, and so forth, we might report, but do not. The Wisest truly
is, in these times, the Greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity leaving
Kings and such like to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and
more to the Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects that,
with all our writing and reporting, Teufelsdrockh could be brought home to
him, till once the Documents arrive? His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily
Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture.
But, on the other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in this remarkable
Volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the buried Bag of