As to Clotilda, before dinner things went very well, but after dinner very ill. I speak of Sebastian, who, after the handing in of the petition to his Lordship, was happier and more light-hearted, and actually talked as frankly with Clotilda as if she were--a bride. For he had already said in Hanover, that "there was not a more tedious and holy thing than a bride, particularly if it were a friend's; sooner would he fritter away his time about the musty Pandects in Florence, or a holy body in a glass shrine at Vienna, than about her." In fact, it was hard to fall in love with Clotilda; I know the reader would not have done it, but would have gone coldly away again. "Her Grecian nose under the almost manly breadth of forehead," he would have said, "this sister-nose to all Madonnas and this frontier wild-game[82] so rare on German faces, her still but bright eyes, which seek nothing beyond themselves, this British gravity, this harmonious thoughtful soul, raise her above the rights of love. And even if this majestic form should incline to love, who could ever be so selfish as to pocket the present of a whole heaven, or so proud as to shoot his heart into hers like a smoke-ball, and becloud thereby this still, pensive serenity?" The reader will be glad to read his own words. But after dinner things went differently. Under Victor's cerebral membrane, some hobgoblin had so thrown into pi all the letters of his ideas in the inner letter-case, that he was up to this time gay, but unsatisfied. He had tried to tie and untie Agatha's hair, to separate her double-bows into unequal, and for that very reason into equal halves again; but the operation had not pleased him as usual,--to-day's interludes of domestic love had put his mirthful spirit wholly out of joint,--and it seemed to him as if, withdrawn from the present joy, he should be happier, at least for a few minutes, in some quiet corner, and he particularly longed to see the sun set. Add to all this the sight of Clotilda's increased love towards Agatha,--the sight of his friend, who, by the deepening silence of his tenderness, his mildening voice, and by a devotedness so irresistible in impassioned natures, commanded every heart, "Love me,"--and, finally, the spectacle of night.... He had already been long sad, when he seemed still gay. Now the mother took the little hero of the forenoon out under the bland evening heaven. They all stood outside of the garden-tabernacle-of-the-covenant, in the first temple of man's devotion. The evening-blood of the sinking sun flowed into the clouds, as into the sea sinks the blood of its giants dying in its depths. The porous cloud did not avail to hide the heavens; it swam round about the moon, and let her pale silver glisten from amidst the slags.