"Why, yes, Count Manuel, you have made endurable terms with this world by succumbing to its foolishness: but do you take comfort, for that is the one way open to anybody who has not rightly seen and judged the ends of this world. At worst, you have had all your desires, and you have made a very notable figure in Count Manuel's envied station." "But I starve there, Hinzelmann, I dry away into stone, and this envied living is reshaping me into a complacent idol for fools to honor, and the approval of fools is converting the heart and wits of me into the stony heart and wits of an idol. And I look back upon my breathless old endeavors, and I wonder drearily, 'Was it for this?'" "Yes," Hinzelmann said: and he shrugged, without ever putting off that sad smile of his. "Yes, yes, all this is only another way of saying that Béda has kept his word. But no man gets rid of Misery, Count Manuel, except at a price." They stayed silent for a while. Count Manuel stroked the round straw-colored head of little Melicent. Hinzelmann played with the small cross which hung at Hinzelmann's neck. This cross appeared to be woven of plaited strings, but when Hinzelmann shook the cross it jingled like a bell. "Yet, none the less," says Hinzelmann, "here you remain. No, certainly, I cannot understand you, Count Manuel. As a drunkard goes back to the destroying cask, so do you continue to return to your fine home at Storisende and to the incessant whispering of your father's father, for all that you have but to remain in Suskind's low red-pillared palace to be forever rid of that whisper and of this dreary satiating of human desires." "I shall of course make my permanent quarters there by and by," Count Manuel said, "but not just yet. It would not be quite fair to my wife for me to be leaving Storisende just now, when we are getting in the crops, and when everything is more or less upset already--" "I perceive you are still inventing excuses, Count Manuel, to put off yielding entire allegiance to my sister." "No, it is not that, not that at all! It is only the upset condition of things, just now, and, besides, Hinzelmann, the stork is to bring us the last girl child the latter part of next week. We are to call her Ettarre, and I would like to have a sight of her, of course--In fact, I am compelled to stay through mere civility, inasmuch as the Queen of Philistia is sending the very famous St. Holmendis especially to christen this baby. And it would be, Hinzelmann, the height of rudeness for me to be leaving home, just now, as though I wanted to avoid his visit--" Hinzelmann still smiled rather sadly. "Last month you could not come to us because your wife was just then outworn with standing in the hot kitchen and stewing jams and marmalades. Dom Manuel, will you come when the baby is delivered and this Saint has been attended to and all the crops are in?"