Only one word, reader! Virtue cannot make one _worthy_ of felicity, but only _worthier_, because existence of itself with us as with the non-moral creatures gives a right to joy,--because Virtue and Joy are incommensurable qualities, and one knows not whether a happy century is earned by a virtuous decade or the latter by the former,--because the years of pleasure forerun the years of virtue, so that the virtuous man, instead of the future, would have first to deserve the past,--instead of heaven, would have first to deserve the earth. The afternoon glided away like a bright rill, over motley trifles as over golden sand, over little joys and over great hopes, over delicate attentions and over the flower-dust of benevolent refinements which is the best sticking-powder of the heart. Victor felt that a mistress who has much intelligence imparts to love a peculiar piquant taste; she herself felt, that the heart which one has plucked with soft, covered hands, and not with rough clutchings, keeps better, just as Borsdorf apples keep longer which one has picked only with gloves on. Although, according to my tables, love stands the highest precisely on the day after the first kiss, that is at 112° Fahrenh. or 10° De l'Isle: with Victor's love, however, his reverence had risen at the same rate,--and love exalts, when the favors which are shown therein make one not bolder but shyer!-- Our friend felt how happy in joy _self-continence_ makes one, and how much the foaming beaker of joy is cleared up and improved by throwing in a few knife-points of sedative-powder. After an afternoon when the whole hours were charming, without one's being able to single out into prominence any extraordinary minutes,--as the feathers of the pheasant shine not singly, but in whole bunches,--after such an afternoon all went into the garden, but Emanuel first. The East Indian, like ground-sparrows, could not endure the confinement of a room, and was silent therein or only read, and that too merely--which does not surprise me--the tragedies of Shakespeare....