Victor did not do this; he absolutely now could not get away from the house, i. e. from the village. The summer days seemed to him to rest in St. Luna, softly breathing, fragrant, blissful; and he was going to be cast out of this softly straying gondola into the slave-ship of the Court,--out of the milk-house of the Parsonage into the princely arsenic-house,--out of the _kindergarten_ of household love into the ice-field of court love. That was a sore thing to him here in the arbor,--and so sweet a thing in Tostato's shop!--When man's wishes and situations exchange places, he accuses the situations, not the wishes. He could laugh at himself for it, he said, but he had a hundred reasons for lingering in St. Luna from one day to another: he was so much disgusted now with his intention of pleasing a man (the Prince) from any other motive than love; it was still more improbable that he should himself please than that he should be pleased; he would rather humor his own whims than those of crownéd heads, and he knew for certain that in the first month he should tell the Minister von Schleunes satirical things to his very face, and in the second even the Prince; and, in fact, now in midsummer he should just be fit to act the complete court-knave, whereas in winter, &c. Beside these hundred reasons, he had still weaker ones which he did not at all mention,--for instance, some such as these: He would gladly be about Clotilda, because he must necessarily, as it were, to justify his conduct,--but which, then, my dear, thy past or thy future?--disclose to her his knowledge about her consanguinity to his friend. To this disclosure there was wanting, what in Paris is dearest, _place_,--and then, too, the exordium. Clotilda was nowhere to be met alone. Connoisseurs say that every secret one tells to one of the fair sex is a sticking-plaster which attaches him to her, and often begets a second secret: was it for some such reason that Victor was so eager to contrive a way of showing to Clotilda his acquaintance with her sisterly relation?-- He stayed day after day, as, besides, the butter-week[187] of the marriage must go by first. He had already marriage-medals in his pocket. But he never could see Clotilda except a second at a time; and, according to Bonnet, one needs half a second for a clear idea,--according to Hooke, a whole one, in fact. Therefore, before he could form a complete conception of this still goddess, she was always gone. At last more serious arrangements were made, not for departure, but for forming the purpose of it.... The sweetest minutes of a visit are those which once more postpone its close; the sweetest of all, those in which one already has cane or fan in hand, and yet does not go. Such minutes now encircled our Fabius of love; softer eyes said to him, "Hurry not!" warmer hands drew him back, and the mother's tear asked him, "Wilt thou rob me of my Flamin so soon as to-morrow?"