and strong boxes gutted; all that you shall learn of Spiegelberg! The
rascal deserves to be hanged on the first gallows that would rather
starve than manipulate with his fingers.

CHARLES VON M. (in a fit of absence). How now? I should not wonder if
your proficiency went further still.

SPIEGEL. I begin to think you mistrust me. Only wait till I have grown
warm at it; you shall see wonders; your little brain shall whirl clean
round in your pericranium when my teeming wit is delivered. (He rises
excited.) How it clears up within me! Great thoughts are dawning in on
my soul! Gigantic plans are fermenting in my creative brain. Cursed
lethargy (striking his forehead), which has hitherto enchained my
faculties, cramped and fettered my prospects! I awake; I feel what I
am--and what I am to be!

CHARLES VON M. You are a fool! The wine is swaggering in your brain.

SPIEGEL. (more excited). Spiegelberg, they will say, art thou a
magician, Spiegelberg? 'Tis a pity, the king will say, that thou wert
not made a general, Spiegelberg, thou wouldst have thrust the Austrians
through a buttonhole. Yes, I hear the doctors lamenting, 'tis a crying
shame that he was not bred to medicine, he would have discovered the
_elixir vitae_. Ay, and that he did not take to financiering, the
Sullys will deplore in their cabinets,--he would have turned flints into
louis-d'ors by his magic. And Spiegelberg will be the word from east to
west; then down into the dirt with you, ye cowards, ye reptiles, while
Spiegelberg soars with outspread wings to the temple of everlasting
fame.