in a corner of the same room at a plain writing-desk with few or no
books at hand, but only one or two drawers with excerpts and
manuscripts. * * * Pigeons fluttered in and out of the chamber."

At Hof, Jean Paul continued to teach with originality and much success
until 1796, when an invitation from Charlotte von Kalb to visit Weimar
brought him new interests and connections. Meanwhile, having finished
_Hesperus_ in July, 1794, he began work immediately on the genial
_Life of Quintus Fixlein, Based on Fifteen Little Boxes of Memoranda_,
an idyl, like _Wuz_, of the schoolhouse and the parsonage, reflecting
Richter's pedagogical interests and much of his personal experience.
Its satire of philological pedantry has not yet lost pertinence or
pungency. Quintus, ambitious of authorship, proposes to himself a
catalogued interpretation of misprints in German books and other tasks
hardly less laboriously futile. His creator treats him with unfailing
good humor and "the consciousness of a kindred folly." Fixlein is the
archetypal pedant. The very heart of humor is in the account of the
commencement exercises at his school. His little childishnesses are
delightfully set forth; so, too, is his awe of aristocracy. He always
took off his hat before the windows of the manor house, even if he saw
no one there. The crown of it all is The Wedding. The bridal pair's
visit to the graves of by-gone loves is a gem of fantasy. But behind
all the humor and satire must not be forgotten, in view of what was to
follow, the undercurrent of courageous democratic protest which finds
its keenest expression in the "Free Note" to Chapter Six. _Fixlein_
appeared in 1796.

Richter's next story, the unfinished _Biographical Recreations under
the Cranium of a Giantess_, sprang immediately from a visit to
Bayreuth in 1794 and his first introduction to aristocracy. Its chief