But the clever girl knows how to silence the apprehension quickly. “Probably he will do nothing; I am not an indispensable piece in his zoological collection; if I were, my heart would probably not have clung to you so unwisely.” Should the father, however, by way of exception, in this case, have an opinion different from hers, there is a sure method. Hanold needs only to go over to Capri, there catch a _lacerta faraglionensis_, for which purpose he may practise the technique on her little finger, then set the animal free again here, catch it before the eyes of the zoologist and give him the choice of the _faraglionensis_ on the mainland or his daughter, a proposal in which mockery, as one may easily note, is combined with bitterness, an admonition to the betrothed, also, not to follow too closely the model after which his beloved has chosen him. Norbert Hanold sets us at rest on this matter, as he expresses, by all sorts of apparently trivial symptoms, the great transformation which has come over him. He voices the intention of taking a wedding trip with his Zoë to Italy and Pompeii, as if he had never been indignant at the newly married travellers, Augustus and Gretchen. His feelings towards this happy couple, who so unnecessarily travelled more than one hundred miles from their German home, have entirely disappeared from his memory. Certainly the author is right when he cites such weakening of memory as the most valuable mark of a mental change. Zoë replies to the announced desire about the destination of their journey, “_by her childhood friend who had, in a way, also been excavated from the ashes_,” (_G._ p. 108), that she does not yet feel quite alive enough for such geographical decision. Beautiful reality has now triumphed over the delusion. Yet an honour still awaits the latter before the two leave Pompeii. When they have arrived at the Hercules Gate, where, at the beginning of the Strada Consolare, old stepping-stones cross the street, Norbert Hanold stops and asks the girl to go ahead. She understands him and, “raising her dress slightly with her left hand, Gradiva _rediviva_ Zoë Bertgang, viewed by him with dreamily observing eyes, crossed with her calmly buoyant walk, through the sunlight, over the stepping-stones.” With the triumph of eroticism, what was beautiful and valuable in the delusion is now acknowledged.