So sweetly then had the spring passed along before him with Sabbatical weeks, with Whitsuntides, with white blossoms, which fell gradually, like butterflies' wings, from the flying season. Victor had postponed the visit to Le Baut, thinking, "I shall have, at all events, to budge soon enough down out of the soft lap of Nature, and up to the court wire-bench and the object-holder (the throne) of the court-microscope";--he had, to be sure, daily exhorted himself, now, soon, before Clotilda's arrival, to start so as not to draw any suspicion upon his intentions, but always in vain, ... when suddenly (for the day before it was the 13th of July) the 14th appeared, and with it Clotilda's luggage without her. Now he actually (according to the official dog-reports) crossed on the 15th the Brook of St. Luna,[90] passed the Alps of the Chamberlain's steps, and pitched his Cæsar's tent on Le Baut's sofa. He knew that to-day no one was there, not even Mat. "Heaven keep our politeness safe and sound," said he; "without it there were not only no holding out among a set of knaves, but it pays also minute-tributes of pleasure, whereas benevolence pays only quarterly assessments and exchequer-instalments, and charitable contributions." Mr. and Mrs. Le Baut were as courteous as never before (I could swear, they had nosed out something of Victor's court-doctor's hat and Doctor's crown); only they knew not what sort of a mouth-piece they should screw on to such a whimsically twisted instrument as Victor was. Like all study-inhabiting crustacea, he would rather talk of things than of persons; Flamin, however, the reverse. For the married pair, there was nothing in any Messiad more sublime than that now, on St. John's day, the Italian Princess would be coming: of that no mortal could talk enough, especially in the village. I know not to what slip of Victor's it was owing, that he led most women into the notion that he loved them. Suffice it, the Chamberlain's wife, who at her years demanded no longer _love_, but the _show_ of love, thought, "Perhaps!" Let no one mistake her, she, to be sure, always spent the first hour with a man on the _watch-tower_ of observation; but the second, then, only on the _hunting-screen_, if the first had been fortunate, and she was cool enough not to hope more than she saw: she even made a jest of every one who, in view of her vanity--a womanly vanity, however--of too easily presuming upon conquests, should think to flatter her otherwise than openly. Suffice it, she judged our Victor to-day too favorably, in her sense, or too unfavorably in ours; as, in general, mere courtiers can see through only mere courtiers. Of Clotilda not a word was said, not even of the time of her return.