st Will and Testament_: and at one time,
poor soul! he was near enough to tears--of vexation.

The wily bookseller, Pasvogel, without loss of time, sate down quietly
to business: he ran through a cursory retrospect of all the works any
ways moving or affecting that he had himself either published or sold on
commission;--took a flying survey of the pathetic in general: and in
this way of going to work, he had fair expectations that in the end he
should brew something or other: as yet, however, he looked very much
like a dog who is slowly licking off an emetic which the Parisian
surgeon Demet has administered by smearing it on his nose:
time--gentlemen, time was required for the operation.

Monsieur Flitte, from Alsace, fairly danced up and down the sessions
chamber; with bursts of laughter he surveyed the rueful faces around
him: he confessed that he was not the richest among them, but for the
whole city of Strasburg, and Alsace to boot, he was not the man that
could or would weep on such a merry occasion. He went on with his
unseasonable laughter and indecent mirth, until Harprecht, the police
inspector, looked at him very significantly, and said--that perhaps
Monsieur flattered himself that he might by means of laughter squeeze or
express the tears required from the well-known meibomian glands, the
caruncula, &c., and might thus piratically provide himself with
surreptitious rain;[18] but in that case, he must remind him that he
would no more win the day with any such secretions than he could carry
to account a course of sneezes or wilfully blowing his nose; a channel
into which it was well known that very many tears, far more than were
now wanted, flowed out of the eyes through the nasal duct; more indeed
by a good deal than were ever known to flow downwards to the bottom of
most pews at a funeral sermon. Monsieur Flitte of Alsace, however,
protested that he was laughing out of pure fun, for his own amusement;
and, upon his honour, with no _ulterior views_.

[18] In the original, the word is Fenster schweiss, window-sweat, _i.
e._ (as the translator understands the passage) Monsieur Flitte was
suspected of a design to swindle the company by exhibiting his two
windows streaming with spurious moisture, such as hoar frost produces on
the windows when melted by the heat of the room, rather than with the
genuine and unadulterated rain which Mr Kabel demanded.

The inspector on his side, being pretty well acquainted with