here like a zephyr,
declaiming extracts from his last hand-book of law, while on her left
her _cavalier servente_, the privy-councilor of Justice Cujacius,
hobbled gaily and gallantly along, constantly cracking legal jokes,
himself laughing so heartily at his own wit that even the serious
goddess often smiled and bent over him, exclaiming, as she tapped him on
the shoulder with the great parchment roll, "You little scamp, who begin
to trim the trees from the top!" All of the gentlemen who formed her
escort now drew nigh in turn, each having something to remark or jest
over, either a freshly worked-up miniature system, or a miserable little
hypothesis, or some similar abortion of their own insignificant brains.
Through the open door of the hall many strange gentlemen now entered,
who announced themselves as the remaining magnates of the illustrious
Order--mostly angular suspicious-looking fellows, who with extreme
complacency blazed away with their definitions and hair-splittings,
disputing over every scrap of a title to the title of a pandect. And
other forms continually flocked in, the forms of those who were learned
in law in the olden time--men in antiquated costume, with long
councilors' wigs and forgotten faces, who expressed themselves greatly
astonished that they, the widely famed of the previous century, should
not meet with special consideration; and these, after their manner,
joined in the general chattering and screaming, which, like ocean
breakers, became louder and madder around the mighty goddess, until she,
bursting with impatience, suddenly cried, in a tone of the most agonized
Titanic pain, "Silence! Silence! I hear the voice of the beloved
Prometheus. Mocking cunning and brute force are chaining the Innocent
One to the rock of martyrdom, and all your prattling and quarreling will
not allay his wounds or break his fetters!" So cried the goddess, and
rivulets of tears sprang from her eyes; the entire assembly howled as if
in the agonies of death, the ceiling of the hall burst asunder, the
books tumbled madly from their shelves. In vain did Muenchhausen step out
of his frame to call them to order; it only crashed and raged all the
more wildly. I sought refuge from this Bedlam broken loose in the Hall
of History, near that gracious spot where the holy images of the Apollo
Belvedere and the Venus de Medici stand near each other, and I knelt at
the feet of the Goddess of Beauty. In her glance I forgot all the