Where censure would hurt the child's sense of honor and self-respect, there I suppressed it, in order to teach my colleagues round about by example, that the sense of honor and character which our days do not sufficiently educate, is the best thing in man--that all other feelings, even the noblest, let him fall out of their arms at hours when the sentiment of honor holds him up in its own--that among men whose principles are silent and whose passions scream into each other's ears, their sense of honor alone imparts to the friend, the creditor and the beloved an iron security.
Seven days earlier than the regular time my Gustavus communed; for the Consistory--the Westphalian tribunal[37] [or Star Chamber], of the parsons, the Penitentiary of the churches and the counterpoise of the government, sent out to us at the castle with pleasure these seven days which his communion-age wanted of its full weight, tor the same number of guilders, as a spiritual fast-dispensation or remission on account of age, (venia ætatis). My pupil had therefore--while the most competent religious teacher sat idle at home--to march out twice a week to the stupid senior parson Setzmann in Auenthal, who fortunately was no jurist as I was, and in whose parsonage a herd of catechumens were obliged to thrust their noses into the coagulated catechismal milk;--Gustavus instead of the beast's tapering snout brought with him a too short muzzle.
Nevertheless, senior Setzmann was not bad; on a parliamentary wool-sack he might have sat till he became an orator, _i. e_., a creature who, among the persons who in the beginning do not believe him, persuades himself first of all. An orator is as easy to be persuaded as he is able to persuade. The senior, in the first hour after the sermon each Sunday, was pious enough; he might indeed incur damnation, but it would be merely for want of sermons and of beer. A reasonable intoxication stands instead, to an incredible degree, of both the _ascetic_ and the _poetic_ enthusiasm. The readers are no friends of mine who say it is out of mere envy and chagrin that my Gustavus heard his lectures, if I record and send it out into the world that the cellar was the Parson's church of St. Paul and St. Peter--that his soul, like the flying fish, soared upward only so long as its wings were oiled--that he appeared always intoxicated and tenderly affected at once, and never aspired to enter heaven, until he could no longer see it. Hermes and Oemler say that I should avoid offence--although the _example_ of Setzmann must give a greater than the making fun of it--if I should deliver in Latin, that the _aquæ supercelestes_ of his eyes always accompanied his two-inches-deeper _humores peccantes_.