But, of course, the case was this:--Victor, before pleasant weather, had pleasant dreams; before bad weather, Satan and his kin appeared to him. The beautiful weather of Saturday, and the thought of Clotilda's birthday and of the after-summer, gave him a morning dream, which, in turn, gave him a stage on which only her sweet image played. A person whom he had seen behind the veil of dream stood before him all the next day in a magic reflection. With him dreams,--those night-moths of the spirit,--like the real moths, strayed out beyond the bounds of night and sleep; at least for the forenoon, he went on loving, awake, every person whom he had begun to love in dream. This time, by an exactly reverse process, waking love flowed on into dreaming love, and the actual Clotilda coincided with the ideal to form one saintly image, so radiant that any one who knows his dream will easily enter into the rest. Therefore must the dream be given to the readers, the poetic ones especially: for others I should be glad to prepare an expurgated edition of the Dog-Post-Days, in which it should be left out; for unpoetic souls that have no dreams themselves should not read any. But to you, ye good, seldom requited female souls,--ye who have a second conscience of your own, beside the first, for pure manners,--whose single virtue, when one looks at it nearly, is seen to bloom up into one wreath made of all the virtues, as nebulous stars, seen through glasses, fall into millions,--ye who, so changeable in all purposes, so unchangeable in the noblest one, go from the earth with unrecognized wishes, with forgotten worth, with eyes full of tears and love, with hearts full of virtue and grief,--to you, dear ones, I gladly tell the little dream and my long story!...