He had now nothing more to discharge in St. Luna than a mere flat civility; for thus much may I well assert without vanity, that a hero whom I have chosen for mine will have, I trust, sufficient good-breeding to go to the Chamberlain Le Baut and say, "_Au revoir!_" Besides, to such state visits he must now accustom himself. Mat, too, was over there, that image of a Cupid with bristly, plucked, drooping wings, tossed to the Chamberlain's lady: the latter joked with him about those vacant looks, which betrayed the intermittent pulse of his love. Le Baut was playing chess with Mat,--Clotilda sat at her little work-table full of silk-flowers, in the midst of this noble trio.... Ye poor daughters! what people have you not often to welcome and hear through! To Clotilda, however, this family friend was nothing but a stuffed-out mummy, and she knew not whether he came or went. Sebastian, as adoptive son of Fortune, as heir of the paternal post of favorite, was to-day received at the Chamberlain's with uncommon civility. Verily, if the courtier shuns unfortunates because sympathy for their sufferings comes over him too heavily, so does he gladly seek the society of the fortunate, because he loves to participate in their joy. The Chamberlain, who even continued to bow before one who, in his fall from a throne, hung midway in the air, naturally bent himself still lower before one who was in the act of making the opposite passage. Victor joined the women, but with an eye that strayed away to the chess-board, in order, if he should be embarrassed, immediately to have at hand a pretext for changing his attention or taking his leave. It was ingenious: for every word which he or the women said was a move at chess; he was obliged to conceal his coldness toward the Le Baut, that is, toward the stepmother,--how much did she know that nothing graces a mother more than a perfect daughter?--and his _warmth_ toward the stepdaughter. The reader must not ask: "What warmth, then, could the old stepmother desire?" For in the higher ranks claims are not altered by blood-relationship or age; merely in the lower is this the case; hence I always fear that what I address to the daughter may weary the mother, and I always cast about, and rightly, when she comes, for a better thread of discourse. Victor easily concealed his _coldness_ by virtue of humanity, which, with him, so often degenerated into a good-natured flattery of immoral hopes; and when a woman wanted to have him fall in love with her, he would say: "I cannot really tell the good little lamb, 'I would rather not.'" His _warmth_ toward Clotilda he concealed--badly, not because it was too strong, but precisely because it was not yet enough so. It is natural: a young man of education can, if he will, conceal and bury in silence his _reciprocated_ love, without making a pulpit announcement, but an _unreturned_ love, one which he himself calls nothing more than mere regard, he lets blaze out from him without cover.