all one to him. 'Hertzog says so and so, somebody else tells the tale a
different way,' and he is perfectly happy! His leathery face gets more
and more deeply wrinkled, his broken angular back bends into sharper
angles and corners, his pointed elbows dig beds for themselves in the oak
table, his skinny fingers bury themselves in his cheeks, his piggish grey
eyes get redder over manuscripts, Latin, Greek, or mediaeval. He falls
into raptures, he smacks his lips, he licks his chops like a cat over a
dainty dish, and then he throws himself upon that dirty litter, with his
knees up to his chin, and he thinks he has had a delightful day! Oh,
Providence of God, is a man's duty best done, are his responsibilities
best discharged, at the top or at the bottom of the scale of human life?"

But the snow was melting away from my legs, the balmy warmth of the stove
was shedding a pleasant influence over my feelings, and I felt myself
reviving in this mixed atmosphere of tobacco-smoke and burning pine-wood.

Knapwurst gravely laid his pipe on the table, and reverently spreading
his hand upon the folio, said in a voice that seemed to issue from the
bottom of his consciousness; or, if you like it better, from the bottom
of a twenty-gallon cask--

"Doctor Fritz, here is the law and the prophets!"

"How so? what do you mean?"

"Parchment--old parchment--that is what I love! These old yellow, rusty,
worm-eaten leaves are all that is left to us of the past, from the days
of Charlemagne until this day. The oldest families disappear, the old
parchments remain. Where would be the glory of the Hohenstauffens, the
Leiningens, the Nidecks, and of so many other families of renown? Where