to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid
down and rich white wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but,
in the softest sleep, a little red-colored Infant! Beside it, lay a roll
of gold Friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known;
also a _Taufschein_ (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately
nothing but the Name was decipherable, other document or indication none
whatever.

"To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth.
Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire
of any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had
passed through the neighboring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with
this Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for
Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: What to do
with this little sleeping red-colored Infant? Amid amazements and
curiosities, which had to die away without external satisfying, they
resolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must,
on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possible
into manhood. The Heavens smiled on their endeavor: thus has that
same mysterious Individual ever since had a status for himself in this
visible Universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground;
and now expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge of good and evil, he, as
HERR DIOGENES TEUFELSDROCKH, professes or is ready to profess, perhaps
not altogether without effect, in the new University of Weissnichtwo,
the new Science of Things in General."

Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might,
that these facts, first communicated, by the good Gretchen Futteral,
In his twelfth year, "produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite
indelible impression. Who this reverend Personage," he says, "that
glided into the Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and then, as
on spirit's wings, glided out again, might be? An inexpressible desire,
full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled within me to
shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and my loneliness, has Fantasy
turned, full of longing (_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to that unknown Father,
who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, might have
taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe.
Thou beloved Father, dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin
penetrable curtains of earthly