I should be glad to see it, if he were to renew again with the Regency Councillor the treaty of friendship: I should then get to describe his Whitsuntide journey to Maienthal, which perhaps is the Septleva[77] and the best thing to which the human understanding has yet attained. But nothing will come of this Septleva, unless they make peace again; by the side of every flower in Maienthal, by the side of every delight, the grief-worn face of his friend would appear and ask, "Canst thou be so happy, while I am so far from it?" It were a wiser course, if both were monks or courtiers; then they might be expected, as friendship is the _marriage_ of souls, to remain continent in a _celibacy_ of souls.... Just at the very conclusion of this chapter the dog brings the new one, and I simply weave both together and go on:-- Without any remarkable vexation at the delay of the answer from Maienthal, Victor went alone on the 4th of May to St. Luna, and with every step that brought him nearer, his soul grew more soft and placable.--When he arrived:---- There are in every house days, which were forgotten in the Litany,--cursed, devilish, deused days,--when all goes criss-cross,--when everything scolds and growls and wags its tail,--when the children and the dog dare not say, Pugh![78] and the liege-and-manor-lord of the house slams-to all the doors and the house-mistress draws the bass-register of moralizing,[79] and strikes the silvery tone of dishes and the bunch of keys,--when one does nothing but hunt up old grievances, all forest-offences of mice and moths, broken parasols and fan-sticks, and that the gunpowder and the perfume-powder, and the elegant note-paper have become damp, and that the sausage-sledge is worn out by sitting to a wooden hobby-horse, and that the dog and the sofa are shedding hair,--when everything comes too late, everything is roasted to death, everything is over-boiled, and the chamber-donna sticks the pins into my lady's flesh as into a doll,--and when, after they have, in this _scurvy sickness where nothing is the matter_, vexed themselves to their hearts' content without cause, they become good-natured again without cause.----