"I am a stupid drawing, an _ambe_, a double number, I say, and absolutely refuse to let the period have its talk out; but I shall still be on the look-out for the _Quinterne_.... And here let me ask, What would be the use of being a man if one were not a fool? Well, now, if I should draw the above-mentioned Quinterne,--which, to be sure, without any extravagant hope, I may well presuppose,--I should not be indifferent on the subject, but in raptures. Good heavens! I must instanter be frizzled, and have my profile taken. I should make verses and _pas_, and both with their traditional _pedes_ (or feet); I should bend myself oftener than a devout monk, to make bows and (where there was anything to gather) bouquets; body, soul, and spirit I should have consist with me of so many finger-tips and feelers, that I should perceive at once (the Quinterne would perceive it still quicker) if our two shadows should come in collision. The touch of the smallest little end of a ribbon would be a good conductor to the electrical ether, which would shoot out from me in lightnings, as she would be charged negatively and I positively; and as to touching her hair, that could not create any less explosion than if a world should fall into the dishevelled[38] hair of a bearded comet.... "And yet what does it all amount to, if I have sense, and consider what she deserves, this good creature, this faithful, this undeserved one? What, in fact, were dull verses, sighs, shoes (boots I should put away), one or two hands pressed, a sacrificing heart, but a slight _gratial_ and _don gratuit_, if thereby a creature was to be obtained who, as I see more and more, has everything belonging to the fairest angel that conducts man through life (invisibleness perhaps excepted); who has all virtues, and arrays them all in beauties; who gleams and gladdens like this spring evening, and yet, like it, conceals her flowers and all her stars, except the star of love; into whose all-powerful and yet gentle harmonica of the heart I would fain be so absorbed in listening; in whose eyes I would behold with such extraordinary delight the tear-drops of the tenderer soul, and the beamings of the loftier one; by whose side I could so fondly remain standing through the whole flying _opera buffa_ and _seria_[39] of life,--so fondly, I say, that so the poor Sebastian might at least, when, in life's holy evening, his shadow grew longer and longer, and the landscape around--him melted away to a broad shadow, and he himself, too, that I might at least behold _both_ shadowy hands," (one of them Flamin was just then holding,) "and exclaim--" (Checking himself:) "Here comes the-old bellows-blower, too, with something in one of his!"