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It was the finale of the night: resuming their pipes; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke; triumphant, cloud-capt without and within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. Bleibt doch ein echter Spass- und Galgen-vogel, said several; meaning thereby that, one day, he would probably be hanged for his democratic sentiments.
Approaching the Spass Vorota, or Gate of the Redeemer, through which none can enter save with uncovered heads such is the veneration in which this Holy Gate is held by all classes we witness a strange and impressive spectacle.
The high school teacher Spinoza Spass the clown of the Cafe Kloesschen had wrapped a Siegfried-costume around his belly, and given himself a Goethe haircut. The lyric poet Mueller soon lay like a green, drunken corpse. Kuno Kohn, who had made a formal reconciliation with Schulz, came as himself. Lisel Liblichlein also came with him, wearing a rustic outfit.
Gradually his doubts increased, to the point where he had to believe in his own death and abandon his faith in God. When he started school, there began the fullness of suffering which some children find there. Lunatic asylum: Bryller, Lola. Drowning in the sea: Kohn, Maria. Suicide: Schulz, Paulus. Surviving: Spinoza Spass, Laaks, Mechenmal. I. Appearance in the schoolyard.
The conqueror of Kazan, Astrakan, and Siberia has here bared his imperial head; Romanoff, Peter the Great, even the voluptuous Catharine, have here done reverence to this holy portal; and all the later sovereigns of Russia, Alexander I., Nicholas, and Alexander II., ere they received their kingly crowns, have passed bareheaded through the Spass Vorota.
By this heroic deed he became one of the most famous fourth-year pupils of the Horror High School. Some sympathetic older high school pupils put an early end to the strange spectacle. The gaunt, pale senior Paulus snatched the tiny unfortunate boy from the venemously peering Spass and threatened to beat up anyone who annoyed the lop-sided little Kohn further.
Perhaps he would have reached Mechenmal if the perennial fourth-year pupil Spinoza Spass hadn't suddenly grasped his hump as if with a hook. Spinoza Spass grinned comfortably and maliciously into the monkey-shaped, longingly apathetic face, as he propelled the little despairing Kohn like a weight slowly through the sunny spring air.
And now, as we enter the gate, the stranger, whatever may be his persuasion or condition, whether a true believer or a heretic of high or low degree, must join in the general torrent of veneration so far as to uncover his head as he walks beneath that sacred portal; for, as I said before, none can pass through the Spass Vorota without this token of respect for its sacred character.
"This," said our guide, following the direction of my eyes, "is the Spass Preobrashenskoi Sabor; a church greatly adorned with the spoils of nations vanquished by Russia." "Well," said Whiskerandos, who in the course of his adventurous life had both seen cannon and learnt their use, "perhaps those big instruments of war are just as well up there, where they are seen, and not heard or felt.
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