I am precisely the antipode of the clever man, and contend that Cupid is only her serving-brother, not the master of the lodge,--her adjutant, not her generalissimo; and this for the reason that she is still always applying either her own or Le Baut's hand to the restoration of the Solomon's Temple wherein she used to be adored as a goddess, side by side with the god,--because in marrying him she married nothing but the Chamberlain's key and his _assemblées_ and his hopes of future influence,--because her hostility to Clotilda relates not to the face, but to the brain,--because her love is now without jealousy. That is to say, she stood in a certain amatory relation with the Evangelist Matthieu, which (according to our feeling as common citizens) differs from hatred in nothing but--duration. Persiflages of love were their declarations of love; their glances were epigrams; his hours of assignation he seasoned with comic accounts of his corresponding hours in other places; and at the time of day when a holy man usually prays off his psalm,[93] both were ironical. Such an _erotic_ connection is nothing but the subdivision of a _political_.... But to return to the story. The Chamberlain proposed now to show his guest something of more interest to a doctor and a scholar. To the chamber wherein the something was, they passed through the Chamberlain's wife's, and through Clotilda's. As they made a day of rest[94] in the former, Victor's eyes were fixed dreamily on Clotilda's profile, which Matthieu had lately cut out of nothing, and which the Chamberlain's wife, out of flattery to the profile-cutter, had hung up here under glass. Singularly--i. e. accidentally--the glass at this moment flew to pieces over the fair face, and Victor and the father were startled; for the latter was, like most great folk, for want of time, at once superstitious and sceptical; and it is well known that superstition regards the flying to pieces of a portrait-glass as a forerunner of the death of the original. The distressed father reproached himself with the permission he had given Clotilda to stay so long in Maienthal, since she would certainly injure her health there by unprofitable, youthful enthusiasms. He meant her mourning for her buried Giulia; for it was merely from sorrow for her, that, on the first of May, she had hurried hither without any baggage; and even the clothes of the beloved friend she had to-day sent among her own. He broke off in a cheerful tone, for Matthieu came, the brother of this Giulia, who only wanted to show and excuse himself, because, like several of the court church of half-brothers, he was going to meet the Princess.