shly to cover himself with
this window-pane moisture, he wished to remind him that he could gain
just as little by it as if he should blow his nose and try to profit
by that, as in the latter case it was well known that more tears
flowed from the eyes through the _ductus nasalis_ than were shed in
any church-pew during a funeral sermon. But the Alsatian assured him
he was only laughing in fun and not with serious intentions.

The Inspector for his part tried to drive something appropriate into
his eyes by holding them wide open and staring fixedly.

The Preacher-at-Early-Service Flachs looked like a Jew beggar riding a
runaway horse. Meanwhile his heart, which was already overcast with
the most promising sultry clouds caused by domestic and
church-troubles, could have immediately drawn up the necessary water,
as easily as the sun before bad weather, if only the floating-house
navigating toward him had not always come between as a much too
cheerful spectacle, and acted as a dam.

The Consistorial Councillor had learned to know his own nature from
New Year's and funeral sermons, and was positive that he himself would
be the first to be moved if only he started to make a moving address
to others. When therefore he saw himself and the others hanging so
long on the drying-line, he stood up and said with dignity: Every one
who had read his printed works knew for a certainty that he carried a
heart in his breast, which needed to repress such holy tokens as tears
are--so as not thereby to deprive any fellowman of something--rather
than laboriously to draw them to the surface with an ulterior motive.
"This heart has already shed them, but in secret, for Kabel was my
friend," he said, and looked around.

He noticed with pleasure that all were sitting there as dry as wooden
corks; at this special moment crocodiles, stags, elephants, witches,
ravens[10] could have wept more easily than the heirs, so disturbed
and enraged were they by Glanz. Flachs was the only one who had a
secret inspiration. He hastily summoned to his mind Kabel's charities
and the mean clothes and gray hair of the women who formed his
congregation at the early-service, Lazarus with his dogs, and his own
long coffin, and also the beheading of various people, Werther's
Sorrows, a small battlefield, and himself--how pitifully here in the
days of his youth he was struggling and tormenting himself over the
clause of the will--just three more jerks of the pump-han