His Lordship, meanwhile, talked with Clotilda as with a daughter, and gave her a letter from her mother and the intelligence of his approaching departure. His manly kindness, guided by respect and graced by refinement, ennobled her attentiveness to his looks; and as she came forth from the affectionate and low-toned conversation with sparkling eyes, her tall form, which usually stooped a little, was raised by a certain inspiration to a noble stature, and she stood in the temple of Nature, as a priestess of the temple, infinitely beautiful. His Lordship separated from her. She found Flamin near the tulip-formed letter C, and the Goddess of Fortune appeared to him in the sweetest human incarnation, to deliver to him her gift. We need not say that the news and the news-bearer threw him into equal ecstasy. Joy had shaken up the whole bee-garden in a swarming-bag and turned it into chaos. The foaming wine-fermentation could not work itself off till it ended in clear, tranquil rapture. His Lordship took himself out of the way of a gratitude swelled by so many ripieno[80] voices and off to his carriage, when the mother with her dumb heart-fulness overtook him; but nothing could she get from her blissfully burdened heart to her lips, save the modest words, that "to-day was his birthday, and his son did not know it, and ought _also_ to have been surprised with a rapture." He tried to escape from her with a grateful smile, and said that he must hasten back to the Prince, who perhaps had taken as kind an interest in this very day as she; but Sebastian, with his friend whom he had found, overtook him at the garden-gate, and the hurrying lord was delayed a little longer by a swift embrace of his son. Not until he was off did the mother, who longed to unburden her love, clasp tenderly Victor's hand, and, forgetting the agreement, asked: "O dearest, why, then, did you not congratulate him on his birthday? For, indeed, _I_ could not." Now for the first time he understood and felt the sudden embrace of his father, and stretched out his arms after him and would fain reciprocate it. Here the old Parson, also coming out of the garden, struck in and said, as if talking nonsense, "I wish he were Administrative Councillor"; but his wife, without making any reply to that, said to him with overflowing voice and love, "Such a cradle-festival thou hast never yet lived to see as to-day's, Peter!" Agatha looked at her inquiringly and admonishingly. "Just out with it," said she, and enfolded the children and drew them both into the paternal embrace, "and wish your good father length of days and three more blessed children."