"But there are persons," said Clotilda, "who cannot make themselves happy there, simply because they do not love to be there." That was very fine and forbearing, but intelligible only to Victor's heart. "I would advise a fine enthusiast" (said he, and made no account, as usual, of the apparent contradiction between Victor's _life_ and Victor's _opinions_) "or a fiery poet to stay at home,--the _flights_ of either, instead of _pas_, would be in court-life what an hexameter is in prose, which the critics cannot bear,--and to the soul with the softest sensibilities I would say, Be off with them! the _heart_ is there treated as a superfluous member, as in the six-fingered family in Anjou the sixth _finger_ is." ... The old woman shook her head quickly to the left. "And yet," he continued, "I would take all three for a month to court and make them unhappy, in order to make them wise." The Chamberlain's family could not accommodate themselves to Victor's style so well as my reader, who to my exceeding delight so cleverly distinguishes humor and the talent of looking at all sides of a thing from flattery and skepticism. Clotilda had slowly shaken her head at the last proposition. In fact, all battled to-day _for_ and _against_ him, in that partial tone which women and relatives always assume towards a stranger, when an hour before they had carried on the same suit, but with a practical application, with their own kin. Victor, who had long been fearing: that he should become disconcerted, went off at last to where he had been so often looking,--to the chess-table, where they were playing with the greatest desire to--lose. The Chamberlain,--we all know how it was with him; he wrote nothing but commendatory letters for the whole world, and the sacramental cup would have been more to his taste, could he have drunk from it a _toast_ to some important man's health,--that personage only promoted as well as he could with the dry chess-statues another's success at the expense of his own; he was glad to lose, provided only Matthieu won. And then, too, he resembled those shamefaced souls who love to bestow their benefits secretly, and he could not find it in his heart to tell his adversary that he was securing him the victory; he took almost greater pains to conceal himself as a courtier than to _conquer himself_ as a Christian. Such a love ought, it would seem, to have been more warmly requited than by open malice; but Mat had the same object in view, and declined the victory which the other threw into his hands, like a real sharper. In vain did Le Baut devise the best moves for checkmating one's self. Mat matched him with still better ones, and threatened every minute to be checkmated too. And every one pities the poor Chamberlain, hunted about on the chess-board, and fearing, like a coquette, that he shall _not_ be conquered. It became at length, for a soft-souled eye, which certainly forgives the weak one sooner than the