le substances, "united in a common
element of dust." Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered
a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily
thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots,
tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Blucher Boots. Old Lieschen
(Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer
and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the
rest a very orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last
citadel of Teufelsdrockh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly
made her way thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdrockh hastily
saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery
of such lumber as was not Literary. These were her _Erdbeben_
(earthquakes), which Teufelsdrockh dreaded worse than the pestilence;
nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would
he have been to sit here philosophizing forever, or till the litter, by
accumulation, drove him out of doors: but Lieschen was his right-arm,
and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed. We
can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought her
dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for Teufelsdrockh,
and Teufelsdrockh only, would she serve or give heed to; and with him
she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by
some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied
them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in her
kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight
and right there: hot and black came the coffee ever at the due moment;
and the speechless Lieschen herself looked out on you, from under her
clean white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and
wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence.

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we
ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke, already
known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. To us,
at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed,
crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently
distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet,
"they never appear without their umbrella." Had we not known with what
"little wisdom" the world is governed;