or
elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once
these three: _Es geht an_ (It is beginning). Shortly after, as _Ew.
Wohlgeboren_ knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in Berlin,
threatened by a Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want
Evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that
the closing Chapter of the Clothes-Volume was to blame. In this
appalling crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was indescribable;
nay, perhaps through one humble individual, something thereof might
pass into the _Rath_ (Council) itself, and so contribute to the
country's deliverance. The Tailors are now entirely pacificated.--

'To neither of these two incidents can I attribute our loss: yet still
comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its Politics.
For example, when the _Saint-Simonian Society_ transmitted its
Propositions hither, and the whole _Gans_ was one vast cackle of
laughter, lamentation and astonishment, our Sage sat mute; and at the
end of the third evening said merely: "Here also are men who have
discovered, not without amazement, that Man is still Man; of which
high, long-forgotten Truth you already see them make a false
application." Since then, as has been ascertained by examination of
the Post-Director, there passed at least one Letter with its Answer
between the Messieurs Bazard-Enfantin and our Professor himself; of
what tenor can now only be conjectured. On the fifth night following,
he was seen for the last time!

'Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile Sects
that convulse our Era, been spirited away by certain of their
emissaries; or did he go forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to
confer with them and confront them? Reason we have, at least of a
negative sort, to believe the Lost still living; our widowed heart
also whispers that ere long he will himself give a sign. Otherwise,
indeed, his archives must, one day, be opened by Authority; where
much, perhaps the _Palingenesie_ itself, is thought to be reposited.'

* * * * *

Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like an Ignis
Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker.

So that Teufelsdroeckh's public History were not done, then, or reduced
to an even, unromantic tenor; nay, perhaps the better part thereof
were only beginning? We stand in a region of conjectures, where
substance has melted into shadow, and one cannot be dist