At last came Le Baut into the garden, after the first toilet, and his wife after the second. The Chamberlain--a short, supple, bedizened thing, that will pull off its hat before the Devil in hell when it enters there--received the son of his hereditary enemy in an uncommonly complimentary manner, and yet with a dignity, for which, however, not his heart, but his rank, gave him strength. Victor, for the mere reason that he imagined him an injured person, cherished a predisposition of good-will towards him. Although Le Baut's tongue was almost, like his teeth, false and inserted, and consequently the words were so, too, which were made up of dentals and linguals, still his neither coarse nor uncourteous flatteries--among which his attitudes and intentions also are to be counted--pleased our honest Victor, who could not hate fine flatterers, as being weak persons. The Chamberlain's lady--who was already in the years which a coquette seeks to conceal, although she had still more reason to conceal the preceding ones--received our well-disposed hero with the sincerest voice that ever yet issued from a false Judas's bosom, and with the most artful face, on which it seemed impossible that the deceptions of love could ever have found room for a glance. The new company took away Victor's embarrassment at once. He soon remarked, indeed, the peculiar fighting- and dancing-positions of the circle towards each other. Clotilda seemed reserved and indifferent towards all, except her father. The step-mother was refined towards the Chamberlain, haughty towards her step-daughter, obliging towards Victor, and bore herself with an easy and subservient coquetry towards Matthieu, who, on his part, was, toward the wedded pair, alternately complimentary and ironical; towards Clotilda, cold as ice; and towards my hero, as courteous as Le Baut was to all. Nevertheless Victor was more joyous and free than any of them, not merely because he was under the free heavens,--for a room always lay upon him like a blockhouse, and a chair was like the stocks,--but because he was among _fine_ people, who, despite the most angular relations, give to conversation four butterflies'-wings, that it may--in contrast to the clinging caterpillar, who impales himself on every thorn--fly without noise and in little curves over all prickles, and alight only on blossoms. He was the greatest friend of fine people and fine turns of expression; hence it was that he took so much pleasure in the society of a Fontenelle, a Crébillon, a Marivaux,--of the entire female sex, and particularly of the decently coquettish portion of it. Do not mistake me. Ah! upon his Flamin, upon his Dahore, on all great men who were exalted above the refined, cowardly, vacant microcosmologists of the great world, his whole soul hung glowing; but for that very reason did he seek out, with a view to greater completeness, the smaller men, as fringe and corner-trimmings, with so much zeal.