stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some
incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial
Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and
beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were
chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. His look,
as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that
cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors; but
rather the gravity as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps
the crater of an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze:
those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the
heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether Fire.

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature, this
of Teufelsdrockh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw
him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in his life;
but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven
Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single billow in that vast
World-Mahlstrom of Humor, with its heaven-kissing coruscations, which is
now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death! The large-bodied Poet and
the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together,
the present Editor being privileged to listen; and now Paul, in his serious
way, was giving one of those inimitable "Extra-Harangues;" and, as it
chanced, On the Proposal for a _Cast-metal King_: gradually a light
kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest
light; through those murky features, a radiant ever-young Apollo looked;
and he burst forth like the neighing of all Tattersall's,--tears streaming
down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,--loud,
long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm
only, but of the whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who
laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right: