desired tear over the
testator. It cannot fairly be assumed that, as long as the earth has
stood, a more woe-begone and muddled congress ever met upon it than
this one composed of seven dry provinces assembled together, as it
were, in order to weep. At first some precious minutes were spent
merely in confused wondering and in smiling; the congress had been
placed too suddenly in the situation of the dog who, when about to
rush angrily at his enemy, heard the latter call out: Beg!--and who
suddenly got upon his hind legs and begged, showing his teeth. From
cursing they had been pulled up too quickly into weeping.

Every one realized that genuine emotion was not to be thought of;
downpours do not come quite so much on the gallop; such sudden baptism
of the eyes was out of the question; but in twenty-six minutes
something might happen.

The merchant Neupeter asked if it were not an accursed business and a
foolish joke on the part of a sensible man, and he refused to lend
himself to it; but the thought that a house might swim into his purse
on a tear caused him a peculiar irritation of the glands, which made
him look like a sick lark to whom a clyster is being applied with an
oiled pinhead--the house being the head.

The Attorney of the Royal Treasury Knol screwed up his face like a
poor workman, whom an apprentice is shaving and scraping on a Saturday
evening by the light of a shoemaker's candle; he was furiously angry
at the misuse made of the title "Will" and quite near to shedding
tears of rage.

The crafty Bookseller Passvogel at once quietly set about the matter
in hand; he hastily went over in his mind all the touching things
which he was publishing at his own expense or on commission, and from
which he hoped to brew something; he looked the while like a dog that
is slowly licking off the emetic which the Parisian veterinary, Demet,
had smeared on his nose; it would evidently be some time before the
desired effect would take place.

Flitte from Alsace danced around in the Burgomaster's office, looked
laughingly at all the serious faces and swore he was not the richest
among them, but not for all Strasburg and Alsace besides was he
capable of weeping over such a joke.

At last the Police-Inspector looked very significantly at him and
declared: In case Monsieur hoped by means of laughter to squeeze the
desired drops out of the well-known glands and out of the Meibomian,
the caruncle, and others, and thus thievi