Victor saw beside him the happy one, who was his friend, looked upon him with moist eyes, and said, "Of that thou wast worthy!" But now twenty rowels spurred him to follow Agatha to the palace;--the pen-and-ink drawing of the artist; the arrangement of dresses; the relationship; the desire which every man has to see the Grace and Infanta of his friend; the desire which _not_ every one has, but he had, to speak with any one for the first time (rather than for the eighth time); and, most of all, the evening of yesterday. Flamin's fire had yesterday burned Victor's bosom to a heap of tinder, through which nothing but sparks were running. He should have set all before him indifferently, because the contest _against_ love differs in nothing from the contest _for_ it, except in order of precedence. But let not the reader by any means imagine that now (as in one of your emasculated and emasculating romances) the Devil is to break loose in our biography, and the hero is to march into the palace and there fall down before Clotilda, and beg, on bended knee, "Be the heroine!" and go about to wrangle with her, out of love, and with the former _pastor fido_ out of hatred, and actually play nothing else than the æsthetic, self-seeking, sensitive--scamp. If I should wish this last, I could excuse myself only on the ground that then I might perhaps come to some biographical murders and duels. I hope, however, I may still, without injury to morals or honesty, in the course of these pages make out a murder or homicide or two, at least in the last volume, where every æsthetic reaper thins out his characters, and throws half of them into the _oubliette_ or family-vault of the inkstand. Victor had too many years and acquaintances to allow himself, with so little regard to days of grace and double usance,[43] on the spot, before supper,--_cito citissime_,--what hast thou, what canst thou?--to fall in love. His optic nerve daily unravelled itself into finer and more delicate fibres, and touched all points of a new form, but the sore feelers curled back again more readily; every month the sight of a new face, like new music, made a _stronger_ and _shorter_ impression. He could only talk his way into love, not see it. Only words winged by virtue and sensibility are the bees which, in such cases, carry the pollen of love from one soul into another. But such a love, of the better kind, is annihilated by the least immoral alloy. How could it form and filter up in a defiled heart, filled with high-treason against a friend? Victor would have gone to the palace as early as half past nine, but the Lady Chamberlain had not yet combed out her eyebrows and the King Charles's spaniel. Seebass brought a billet to Flamin:-- "I cannot see you, my dearest, to-day. Three Graces hold me fast, and the third you yourself have sent. Tell your British friend he must love me because I love you. Surgery may do without sympathy, but friendship cannot.