The fatigues of the day (and very few men but would be fatigued after
swimming wellnigh thirty miles under water) caused young Otto to sleep
so profoundly, that he did not remark how, after Friday's sunset, as
a natural consequence, Saturday's Phoebus illumined the world, ay, and
sunk at his appointed hour. The serving-maidens of the hostel, peeping
in, marked him sleeping, and blessing him for a pretty youth, tripped
lightly from the chamber; the boots tried haply twice or thrice to call
him (as boots will fain), but the lovely boy, giving another snore,
turned on his side, and was quite unconscious of the interruption. In a
word, the youth slept for six-and-thirty hours at an elongation; and the
Sunday sun was shining and the bells of the hundred churches of Cologne
were clinking and tolling in pious festivity, and the burghers and
burgheresses of the town were trooping to vespers and morning service
when Otto awoke.
As he donned his clothes of the richest Genoa velvet, the astonished
boy could not at first account for his difficulty in putting them on.
"Marry," said he, "these breeches that my blessed mother" (tears filled
his fine eyes as he thought of her)--"that my blessed mother had made
long on purpose, are now ten inches too short for me. Whir-r-r! my coat
cracks i' the back, as in vain I try to buckle it round me; and the
sleeves reach no farther than my elbows! What is this mystery? Am I
grown fat and tall in a single night? Ah! ah! ah! ah! I have it.
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