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At which Madame de Schlippenschlopp would shriek, and grasp her in her arms; and at which, I confess, I would myself blubber like a child. She had six darling friends at school, and every courier from Kalbsbraten carried off whole reams of her letter-paper.
This last epigram especially was voted so killing that it flew like wildfire; and I know for a fact that our Charge-d'Affaires at Kalbsbraten sent a courier express with it to the Foreign Office in England, whence, through our amiable Foreign Secretary, Lord P-lm-rston, it made its way into every fashionable circle: nay, I have reason to believe caused a smile on the cheek of R-y-lty itself.
Roused thus from my reverie, I questioned the young fellow about his residence at Kalbsbraten, which has been always since the war a favorite place for our young gentry, and heard with some satisfaction that Potzdorff was married to the Behrenstein, Haabart had left the dragoons, the Crown Prince had broken with the but mum! of what interest are all these details to the reader, who has never been at friendly little Kalbsbraten?
In Kalbsbraten, as in every other German town, there are a vast number of literary characters, of whom our young friend quickly became the chief. They set up a literary journal, which appeared once a week, upon light-blue or primrose paper, and which, in compliment to the lovely Ottilia's maternal name, was called the Kartoffelnkranz.
The way in which I have Dorothea von Speck present to my mind is this: not as I first saw her in the garden for her hair was in bandeaux then, and a large Leghorn hat with a deep ribbon covered half her fair face, not in a morning-dress, which, by the way, was none of the newest nor the best made but as I saw her afterwards at a ball at the pleasant splendid little court, where she moved the most beautiful of the beauties of Kalbsbraten.
I added that I was, like all the world, immensely struck with the beauty of the edifice; heard of it at Rome, where it was considered to be superior to any of the celebrated fountains of that capital of the fine arts; finally, that unless perhaps the celebrated fountain of Aldgate in London might compare with it, Kalbsbraten building, EXCEPT in that case, was incomparable.
If Madame Rumpel had her satin dyed ever so quietly, the whole society was on the qui vive; if Countess Pultuski sent to Berlin for a new set of teeth, not a person in Kalbsbraten but what was ready to compliment her as she put them on; if Potzdorff paid his tailor's bill, or Muffinstein bought a piece of black wax for his moustaches, it was the talk of the little city.
Away went the surgeon, and the next day all Kalbsbraten knew that I was on the point of death: I had been delirious all night, had had eighty leeches, besides I don't know how much medicine; but the Kalbsbrateners knew to a scruple. Whenever anybody was ill, this little kind society knew what medicines were prescribed. Everybody in the town knew what everybody had for dinner.
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