What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,--you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold?
Some indeed said withal, he was 'the very Spirit of Love embodied': blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless.
Nevertheless friend Teufelsdroeckh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in these cases, was probably the best: _Er hat Gemueth und Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals-Gunst; ist gegenwaertig aber halb-zerruettet, halb-erstarrt_, "He has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or favour of Fortune; and so is now half-cracked, half-congealed."-- What the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder: we, safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, are careless.
The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdroeckh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself.

We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson.

And perhaps with the like return; for Teufelsdroeckh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit.

On the other hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically influential of the two, looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle.

Let but Teufelsdroeckh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, _Bravo! Das glaub' ich_; in either case, by way of heartiest approval.