I cannot say, The reader can easily imagine how Victor lived or grieved through the first May-days; for he hardly can imagine it. Perhaps we all held the bands which bound him to Flamin to be a few thin fibres or unsensitive cords of custom; in fact, however, delicate nerves and firm muscles form the lattice-work[74] of their souls. He himself knew not how much he loved him, until he was compelled to cease doing so. Into this common error we all fall, hero, reader, and writer, on the same ground: when one has not been able for a long time to give a friend, whom one has long loved, any proof of that love, for want of opportunity, then one torments one's self with the self-accusation of growing cold towards him. But this accusation is itself the finest proof of love. With Victor yet more things conspired to persuade him that he was becoming a colder friend. The vesper-tilts about Clotilda, those disputations _pro loco_, did, besides, their part; but he was always afflicting himself with the self-criticism that he had sometimes refused his friend little sacrifices; e. g. the neglecting of a pleasure-party on his account, the staying away from certain too distinguished houses which Flamin hated. But in friendship great sacrifices are easier than small ones,--one would often rather sacrifice to it life than an hour, a piece of property than the gratification of some petty bad habit, just as many people would rather present you a bill of exchange than a piece of _blank_ paper of the same size. The secret is, great sacrifices inspiration makes, but little ones, reason. Flamin, who himself never made little ones, demanded them of others with heat, because he took them for great ones. Victor had less to reproach himself with on this point; but Clotilda shamed him, for her longest and shortest days, as is the case with most of her sex, were nothing but sacrificial days.--Then, too, his natural delicacy, which had now gained by his court-life the addition of the conventional kind, was wounded more deeply than ever by his friend's sharp corners.--The fine people give to their inner man (as to their outer) by bran of almonds and night-gloves soft hands, merely for the sake of feeling better the under side of the cards, and for the sake of giving neat ladylike half-boxes-in-the-ear, but not in order, like the surgeons, to handle wounds with them. Unfortunately this delusion about his growing cold prescribed to him a friendly external effort to show warmth when with Flamin. Now as the Regency-Councillor did, not consider that even _constraint_ may full as often arise from _sincerity_, as unconstraint from falseness: accordingly the Devil had more and more his game of Bestia (in which a friendship was the high stake) till on witches' day he actually won it.