In men, again--sometimes, too, in women, but only in one out of a thousand--it may arise from the sad thought of the sharks which tear off the arm with which, down in the dark ocean, all breathless and anxious, we have clasped hold of four pearls of happiness. Or, perhaps, from a deeper question still. Is not our heart's inward bliss but an olive-leaf which a dove brings to us, fluttering over the great deluge foaming and seething all round us--an olive-leaf which she has culled for us away in the far distant Paradise, high up above the flood, clear and blissful in the eternal sun? And if all we attain of that whole olive-garden is but one leaf, instead of all its flowers and its fruit, is this leaf of peace, is this dove of peace, to give to us something _beyond_ peace--namely, hope? Firmian went back to the shooting-ground, his breast full of growing hopes. The heart of man, which, in matters of chance, makes its calculations in direct defiance of the theory of probabilities, and when heads have turned up once, expects them three times running--(although what _ought_ to be anticipated is the very reverse)--or reckons upon hitting the eagle's talon became it has knocked the sceptre out of it--this heart of man, uncontrollable alike in its fears and in its hopes, the advocate took with him to the shooters' trench. He came not by the talons, however. And at the folded praying claws or hands of the general of the Capuchins--these algebraic exponents or heraldic devices of two forequarters of pork--aimed he alike in vain. It mattered not; more was left of the eagle, when all was done, than would be this day of Poland, if the latter, or its coat of arms--a silver eagle in a bloody field--were to be set up on a throne or a bird-pole, and shot at by a shooting-club composed of an army or two. Even the imperial globe was not yet knocked down. Number 69, a formidable foregoer, Mr. Everard Rosa von Meyern, had taken his aim--eager to cull _this_ forbidden fruit--a Ribstone pippin and football fit for a very prince, such as this imperial apple, was a thing of too great price to be grasped for the sake of what was to be gained along with it--'twas honour alone that fired his heart--he pulled his trigger, and he might just as well have aimed in the opposite direction. Rosa--this particular apple being too high out of his reach--went, all blushes, in among the lady spectators, dealing out apples of Paris all round, and telling each lady how lovely she was, that she might be convinced how handsome he was himself. In the eyes of a woman, her panegyrist is, firstly, a very _clever_ man, and, ere long, such a _nice_-LOOKING one. Rosa knew that grains of incense are the anise which these doves fly after, as though infatuated.