Victor was even more astounded than we are, and proposed to his Lordship whether he might not, without injury to his oath, reveal to Clotilda his induction into these mysteries, as he had two reasons for it: first, her delicacy would be spared embarrassment at the appearance which her sisterly love must otherwise, in her opinion, have in his eyes;[154] secondly, one keeps a secret better, if only _one_ more person helps him hold his tongue about it, as is well known from the case of Midas's barber and the reeds; the third reason was, that he had several reasons. His Lordship naturally did not refuse. For the rest, he introduced his Victor with no pedantic rules of march to the ice-course and tilt-yard of the court. He merely advised him neither intentionally to seek nor to shun any one, particularly the house of Schleunes,--to unbridle his friend Flamin, who was in Matthieu's leading-strings, and to guide him, instead of by the bit, rather with a friendly hand,--and himself to covet the rank of a doctor, and nothing more. He said, rules before experience were like geometry before the operation for the cataract. Even after the harvest of experience Gratian's _homme de cour_ and Rochefoucauld's Maxims were not so good as the memoirs and history of courts, i. e. the experiences of others. Finally he appealed to his own example, and said, it was only within a few years that he had understood the following rules of _his_ father's. The greatest hatred, like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, is quiet.--Women have more _flow_, and fewer _overflows_, of emotion than we.--There is nothing one hates so much in another as a _new_ fault, which he does not show till after some years.--One commits the most follies among people who are of no account.--It is the most common and pernicious delusion, that one always takes one's self to be the only one who remarks certain things.--Women and soft-hearted people are timid only in their own dangers, and courageous in those of others, where they have to save them.--Trust no one (and though it were a saint) who in the smallest trifle leaves his honor in the lurch; and a woman of that kind still less.--Most persons confound their vanity with their sense of honor, and allege wounds inflicted on the one as wounds inflicted on the other, and the reverse.--What we undertake from humanity, we should always accomplish, if we mixed in no selfishness with our motive.--The warmth of a man is by nothing more easily misunderstood than by the warmth of a young man. The last observation, which perhaps had a nearer reference, he had made while he was already on the shore of the island in the attitude of leave-taking, which he did with that considerate courtesy which in his rank guides the hands and arms of even parents and children.[155] THIRD INTERCALARY DAY. Meteorological Observations upon Man.