Here is this little Knapwurst, who in the
midst of excitement, grand hunts, gallant trains of horsemen coming and
going, the barking of the hounds, the trampling of the horses, and the
shouts of the hunters, is living quietly all alone, buried in his books,
and thinking of nothing but the times long gone by, whilst joy or sorrow,
songs or tears, fill the world around him, while spring and summer,
autumn and winter, come and look in through his dim windows, by turns
brightening, warming, and benumbing the face of nature outside. Whilst
men in the outer world are subject to the gentle influences of love, or
the sterner impulses of ambition or avarice, hoping, coveting, longing,
and desiring, he neither hopes, nor desires, nor covets anything. As long
as he is smoking his pipe, with his eyes feasting on a musty parchment,
he lives in the enjoyment of dreams, and he goes into raptures over
things long, long ago gone by, or which have never existed at all; it is
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.
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