180 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
much; and though most comical illustrations of the 
Flemish costume, there was always something sad about 
them as they courtesied at the windows just before 
dinner-time, and sniffed the odour of the kitchen with a 
relish which told too plainly of their condition. 
Of all the quaint literary allusions to the broom, 
nothing can surpass the passage in Richter’s story of 
Lenette, in the fifth chapter of the “Thom Pieces,” 
where poor Lenette endures one of those many perver¬ 
sions of thrift, for the exercise of which the crooked- 
minded adventurer had such a peculiar gift. Those who 
have read “Jean Paul” will see in this much more than is 
apparent on the surface of the incident; it is, in fact, a 
masterly illustration of crotchetty-mindedness :—“On 
the morrow he sat in judgment on everything that was 
going qn behind him (continuing to write, however, at 
the same time, but always worse and worse), and exam¬ 
ined one thing after the other, in order to decide whether 
or not it had the free pass of necessity. The Meriting martyr' 
endured much with tolerable fortitude; but when 
Wendeline went into the bedroom, and swept the straw 
under the green marriage torus with a long broom, this 
last cross was too heavy for his shoulders. Besides, he 
had read yesterday, in an old journal of natural history, 
that the theologian, Johann Pechmann, could not endure 
the sound of a broom, that the rustling of a broom 
almost took away his breath, and that he had once fairly 
taken to his heels and run away from a street-sweep who 
chanced to push against him. Such reading had the 
effect of making him more attentive to a similar case, 
and at the same time more intolerant. Without rising 
