er the gravity
as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of
an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those
eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the
heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether
Fire!

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature,
this of Teufelsdroeckh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that
once we saw him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last
time in his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have
awakened the Seven Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single
billow in that vast World-Mahlstrom of Humour, with its heaven-kissing
coruscations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death!
The large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat
talking miscellaneously together, the present Editor being privileged
to listen; and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those
inimitable 'Extra-harangues'; and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for
a _Cast-metal King_: gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes
and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky
features, a radiant, ever-young Apollo looked; and he burst forth like
the neighing of all Tattersall's,--tears streaming down his cheeks,
pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,--loud, long-continuing,
uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the
whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed,
yet with measure, began to fear all was not right: however,
Teufelsdroeckh composed himself, and sank into his old stillness; on
his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of
shame; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have
any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this;
and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be
altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the
cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an
everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter
as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing,
but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at
best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were
laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who cannot
laugh is not only fit for treasons, strat