ou still, shut
out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly Space, wend to
and fro among the crowd of the living? Or art thou hidden by those far
thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of the
Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms
need not strive to reach? Alas, I know not, and in vain vex myself to
know. More than once, heart-deluded, have I taken for thee this and
the other noble-looking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, with
infinite regard; but he too had to repel me; he too was not thou.

'And yet, O Man born of Woman,' cries the Autobiographer, with one of
his sudden whirls, 'wherein is my case peculiar? Hadst thou, any more
than I, a Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the
Adam and Eve, who led thee into Life, and for a time suckled and
pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest Father and Mother; these were,
like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true
Beginning and Father is in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt
never behold, but only with the spiritual.'

'The little green veil,' adds he, among much similar moralising, and
embroiled discoursing, 'I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name,
Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece
of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name
I have many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay
there any clue. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate
to believe. To no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's
Books, in and without the German Empire, and through all manner of
Subscriber-Lists (_Praenumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and other
Name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the name
Teufelsdroeckh, except as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs.
Again, what may the unchristian rather than Christian "Diogenes" mean?
Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such designation, to
shadow-forth my future destiny, or his own present malign humour?
Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an
Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into
self-support by the mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage
have been a smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been;
or indeed by the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have
I fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung
at, wound