But on the 4th of May he is to lose all again, I think. For Victor, whose heart at the least motion bled through the bandage again, undertook not only, on the 4th of May, to be present at the birth-festival of the Court-Chaplain in St. Luna, but also to celebrate a birthday of renewed friendship with Flamin. He would gladly take the first, second, third, tenth step, if his friend would only stop where he was, and not take a step backward. For he cannot forget _him_, he cannot get over a compulsory renunciation, however easy for him generally the voluntary one was. He pressed every evening Flamin's fair image, which was made out of his love for _him_, out of his incorruptible honesty, his rock-like courage, his love for the state, his talents, even his excitability, which originated in the double feeling of injustice and of his own innocence,--this glowing image he pressed to his lacerated heart, and when in the morning he saw him going to his public duties, his eyes ran over, and he congratulated the servant who carried his papers behind him. Had not the 4th of May, the great day of reconciliation, been so near with its expiatory offering, he would have been obliged to accustom little Julia to himself, as a third estate between the two others, as a key-note between conflicting tones. Only the hope of May applied to his thoughts, instead of burning stings of nettle-points, at least rose-briers.--The friend of thy youth, dear reader, thy school-friend, is never forgotten, for he has something of the brother about him;--when thou enterest the school-yard of life, which is a Schnepfenthal educational institute, a Berlin scientific school,[75] a Breslau Elisabethanum, a Scheerau Marianum,[76]--then for the first time thou meetest friends, and your youthful friendship is the morning divine service of life.