Fact were little better than a Fiction; if here we had no
direct Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's History; but only
some more or less fantastic Adumbration, symbolically, perhaps
significantly enough, shadowing-forth the same! Our theory begins to
be that, in receiving as literally authentic what was but
hieroglyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in that case we scruple
not to name Hofrath Nose-of-Wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to
make fools of others. Could it be expected, indeed, that a man so
known for impenetrable reticence as Teufelsdroeckh, would all at once
frankly unlock his private citadel to an English Editor and a German
Hofrath; and not rather deceptively _in_lock both Editor and Hofrath
in the labyrinthic tortuosities and covered-ways of said citadel
(having enticed them thither), to see, in his half-devilish way, how
the fools would look?

Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will perhaps find himself
short. On a small slip, formerly thrown aside as blank, the ink being
all-but invisible, we lately notice, and with effort decipher, the
following: 'What are your historical Facts; still more your
biographical? Wilt thou know a Man, above all a Mankind, by
stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts? The Man is the
spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became. Facts are
engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. And then how
your Blockhead (_Dummkopf_) studies not their Meaning; but simply
whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral!
Still worse is it with your Bungler (_Pfuscher_): such I have seen
reading some Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking
the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile.' Was
the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present
boasts himself, might mistake the Teufelsdroeckh Serpent-of-Eternity in
like manner? For which reason it was to be altered, not without
underhand satire, into a plainer Symbol? Or is this merely one of his
half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a
Figure, he cares not whither it gallop? We say not with certainty; and
indeed, so strange is the Professor, can never say. If our suspicion
be wholly unfounded, let his own questionable ways, not our necessary
circumspectness, bear the blame.

But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed exhausted
Editor determines here to shut these Paper-b