ind_, though all but no _Body_ whatever, then canst thou kill me
first, and art the taller. Hereby, at last, is the Goliath powerless,
and the David resistless; savage Animalism is nothing, inventive
Spiritualism is all.

"With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things, in this
so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. Two little visual
Spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of
the UNFATHOMABLE, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon,--make
pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and,
simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into
Dissolution; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant! Deuce on it
(_verdammt_), the little spitfires!--Nay, I think with old Hugo von
Trimberg: 'God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see
his wondrous Manikins here below.'"

But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great generality,
which is our chief quest here: How prospered the inner man of
Teufelsdrockh, under so much outward shifting! Does Legion still lurk
in him, though repressed; or has he exorcised that Devil's Brood? We
can answer that the symptoms continue promising. Experience is the
grand spiritual Doctor; and with him Teufelsdrockh has now been long a
patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend belong
to the numerous class of Incurables, which seems not likely, some cure
will doubtless be effected. We should rather say that Legion, or the
Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, but next
to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the
while, in a quiet but no comfortable state.

"At length, after so much roasting," thus writes our Autobiographer, "I
was what you might name calcined. Pray only that it be not rather, as is
the more frequent issue, reduced to a _caput-mortuum_! But in any
case, by mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many things.
Wretchedness was still wretched; but I could now partly see through it,
and despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had I not
found a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and, when I looked through his
brave garnitures, miserable enough? Thy wishes have all been sniffed
aside, thought I: but what, had they even been all granted! Did not the
Boy Alexander weep because he had not two Planets to conquer; or a whole
Solar System; or after that, a whole Universe? _Ach Gott_, w