Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/173

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN.
157

morant towards the poor, as he was a squanderer towards the rich. It may be, too, the Conrector might once or twice have heard, in the Law Courts, of patrons by whom not indeed the church and churchyard—though these things are articles of commerce in England—so much as the true management of them, had been sold, or rather farmed to farming-candidates. I know from Lange,[1] that the Church must support its patron, when he has nothing to live upon; and might not a nobleman, before he actually began begging, be justified in taking a little advance, a fore-payment of his alimentary moneys, from the hands of his pulpit-farmer? —

3. "He had lately betrothed himself with Fräulein von Thiennette, and given her a piece of gold, as marriage-pledge; and could therefore wed the said Fräulein, were he once provided for," &c.

Voluntary Note by me. I hold this ground to be the strongest in the whole Petition. In the eyes of Herr von Aufhammer, Thiennette's genealogical tree was long since stubbed, disleaved, worm-eaten, and full of millepedes; she was his Œconoma, his Castle-Stewardess, and Legatess a Latere for his domestics; and with her pretensions for an alms-coffer, was threatening in the end to become a burden to him. His indignant wish that she had been provided for with Fixlein's legacy might now be fulfilled. In a word, if Fixlein become Parson, he will have the third ground to thank for it; not at all the mad fourth..…

4. "He had learned with sorrow, that the name of his Shock, which he had purchased from an Emigrant at Leipzig, meant Egidius in German; and that the dog had drawn upon him the displeasure of his Lordship. Far

  1. His Clerical Law, p. 551.