Clotilda's parents received him with so much civility,--i. e. with so much courtesy of the body, with so much powdered sugar on every feature, with so much sirup of violets on every word,--in short, he found the report which Matthieu had rendered to Flamin of their amiable disposition towards him so well grounded,--that he could have selected no better opportunity than this to dissuade them from the transplanting of their daughter, had they not begun to thank him for having been himself the very transplanter. They had learned or guessed all, and thanked him for his intercession, to which they probably attached more self-interested views than the daughter did. It would have been ridiculous, in Clotilda's presence, to advise _her_ against Flachsenfingen, and dissuade from that for which they thanked him; still, however, he attempted something. He told the Chamberlain "his daughter deserved rather to _have_ a court than to adorn one; nay, that _he_ deserved at most in the whole matter--an excuse, as Clotilda would certainly prefer the society of her parents to the constraint of court; in that case, he would promise to put the index back again with the Prince, and rectify everything without disadvantage." The father took this expression for a strong deprecation of gratitude; the step-mother, for some piece of knavery or other; the daughter, for--words. She said, a little curtly, "I think it was easy to choose between disobedience and absence." For, unbending as she was to her step-mother, she willingly followed the hints of her father, whom, with all his weaknesses, and as the only soul on the earth attached to him, she tenderly loved. Victor, at last, though reluctantly, was forced to give it up; but why does man find it harder to resign himself to the future than to the past?--The coldness of the daughter was naturally not less (but sincerer) than the warmth of the parents.... And this coldness was precisely what refreshed his glowing brain. This cold, indifferent form was wrapped as a veil about the sublime and loving one, as it ever floated before him with that melancholy look which he could not endure. Without the consciousness of anything wrong, satisfied with his obedience to Emanuel's request, he withdrew, with his feelings oppressed by decorum, returning coldness with greater coldness.--He would have been a poor lover, if he had known what he wanted; for otherwise he never could have desired of Clotilda, even in case of her love for him, any extraordinary warmth towards a medicus whom her parents forced upon her (which injures a man even more than ugliness), who so impolitely took himself out of the garden without a birthday _carmen_, and who pressed her into the seven gilded towers of court-service, despite her reluctance, despite every probability of her future _prison-fever_.--But for the _vacant freehold_ of his heart this very vexation was wholesome....