s which he can
next do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing Satanic Poetry; or
blow out his brains. In the progress towards any of which consummations,
do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating,
brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like,
stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson itself?

Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. He quietly lifts his
_Pilgerstab_ (Pilgrim-staff), "old business being soon wound up;" and
begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the terraqueous Globe!
Curious it is, indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such
intensity of feeling, above all, with these unconscionable habits of
Exaggeration in speech, he combines that wonderful stillness of his,
that stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his sudden bereavement, in
this matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real Doomsday and
Dissolution of Nature, in which light doubtless it partly appeared
to himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby; but rather
is compressed closer. For once, as we might say, a Blumine by magic
appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things
rush out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from their
glass vial: but no sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, than the
strange casket of a heart springs to again; and perhaps there is now no
key extant that will open it; for a Teufelsdrockh as we remarked,
will not love a second time. Singular Diogenes! No sooner has that
heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard
it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. "One
highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel, had recalled
him as out of Death-shadows into celestial Life: but a gleam of Tophet
passed over the face of his Angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and
heard the laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture," adds he, "whereby
the Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean-waters: a lying
vision, yet not wholly a lie, for _he_ saw it." But what things soever
passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despairings
soever Teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he has the goodness to
conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence. We know it well; the
first mad paroxysm past, our brave Gneschen collected his dismembered
philosophies, and buttoned himself together; he was meek, silent, or
spoke of the weathe