I take up my historical thread again, and ask the reader what he thinks of Sebastian's flirtations. And how does he explain them to himself?--He replies, and philosophically indeed: "Through Clotilda; she, by her magnetizing, has put him _en rapport_ with the whole female world; she has knocked at this swarm of bees, and now there is no more peace.--A man may sit for twenty-six years cold and sighless in his book-dust; but when he has once breathed the ether of love, then is the oval hole of the heart forever shut, and he must go forth into the air of heaven and be continually gasping at it, as I see by the coming dog-post-days plainly enough." The reader has accustomed himself to a quaint philosophical style, but what he says is true; hence a maiden never sues so eagerly for a second lover for her stage as after the decease of the first, and after her vows to throw away her recruiting-license. But how could the reader fail to hit upon still weightier reasons,[143]--1. General love, and 2. Victor's maternal marks? 1. General love is too little understood. There is as yet no description of it extant but mine,--namely, in our days, reading-cabinets, dancing-halls, concert-halls, vineyards, coffee-tables, and tea-tables are the forcing-houses of our hearts and the wire-mills of our nerves; the former are too big, the latter too fine. Now when, in these marriage-seeking and marriageless times, a young man, who still watches like a Jew for his female Messiah, and still is without the highest object of the heart, accidentally reads with a dancing-partner, with a lady member of his club, or an _associée_, or sister in office, or other collaboratress, a hundred pages in the "Elective Affinities" or in the Dog-post-days,--or exchanges from three to four letters with her upon the culture of silk or clover, or on Kant's _Prolegomena_,--or scrapes the powder from her forehead some five times with the powder-knife,--or with her, and by her side, ties up the intensely fragrant kidney-beans,--or actually at the ghostly hour (which becomes full as often the sentimental hour) quarrels with her on the first principle of morals;--then is this much certain,--that the aforesaid youth (provided _refinement_, _feeling_, and _reflection_ hold a mutual balance within him) must needs behave a little madly, and feel towards the aforesaid collaboratress (that is, if she does not by some higglings of head or heart offend against his feelers) something which is too warm for friendship and too _unripe_ for love,--which borders on the former, because it includes several objects, and on the latter, because of this it dies. And this is, in fact, neither more nor less than my general love, which I have otherwise called simultaneous and Tutti-[144]love. Examples are odious; else I would adduce mine. This universal love is a glove without fingers (or mitten), into which, because no partitions separate the four fingers, any hand easily slips; into the partial love, or the