uttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn
handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated
with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature,
and Bluecher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his
bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook,
errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very
orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of
Teufelsdroeckh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly made her
may thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdroeckh hastily saving
his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such
lumber as was not literary. These were her _Erdbeben_ (earthquakes),
which Teufelsdroeckh dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless,
to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would he have been
to sit here philosophising forever, or till the litter, by
accumulation, drove him out of doors: but Lieschen was his right-arm,
and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed.
We can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought
her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for
Teufelsdroeckh, and Teufelsdroeckh only, would she serve or give heed
to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it
were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his
wants, and supplied them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted,
and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the
ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coffee
ever at the due moment; and the speechless Lieschen herself looked out
on you, from under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her
clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence,
almost of benevolence.

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we
ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke,
already known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages.
To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those
purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals,
perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in
dry weather or in wet, 'they never appear without their umbrella.' Had
we not known with what 'little wisdom' the world is governed; and how,
in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most
part be but m