 prioress, the deaness and
sub-chantress leading the procession in one coach, and the dean of Strasburg,
with the four great dignitaries of his chapter on her left-hand - the rest
following higglety-pigglety as they could; some on horseback -- some on foot -
some led - some driven - some down the Rhine - some this way - some that - all
set out at sun-rise to meet the courteous stranger on the road.
    Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale - I say Catastrophe (cries
Slawkenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly disposed, not only
rejoiceth (gaudet) in the Catastrophe and Peripeitia of a DRAMA, but rejoiceth
moveover in all the essential and integrant parts of it - it has its Protasis,
Epistasis, Catastasis, its Catastrophe or Peripeitia growing one out of the
other in it, in the order Aristotle first planted them - without which a tale
had better never be told at all, says Slawkenbergius, but be kept to a man's
self.
    In all my ten tales, in all my ten decads, have I, Slawkenbergius, tied down
every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have done this of the stranger
and his nose.
    - From his first parley with the centinel, to his leaving the city of
Strasburg, after pulling off his crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is the
Protasis or first entrance -- where the characters of the Personæ Dramatis are
just touched in, and the subject slightly begun.
    The Epistasis, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and heightened,
till it arrives at its state or height called the Catastasis, and which usually
takes up the 2d and 3d act, is included within that busy period of my tale,
betwixt the first night's uproar about the nose, to the conclusion of the
trumpeter's wife's lectures upon it in the middle of the grand parade; and from
the first embarking of the learned in the dispute - to the doctors finally
sailing away, and leaving the Strasburgers upon the beach in distress, is the
Catastasis or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their bursting
forth in the fifth act.
    This commences with the setting out of the Strasburgers in the Frankfort
road, and terminates in unwinding the labyrinth and bringing the hero out of a
state of agitation (as Aristotle calls it) to a state of rest and quietness.
    This, says Hafen Slawkenbergius, constitutes the catastrophe or peripeitia
of my tale - and that is the part of it I am going to relate.
    We left the stranger behind the
