Victor strode along tremblingly before the picture-gallery and music-hall of his mirrored and echoed childhood, the parsonage, likewise before the scouring Apollonia, to whom he gladly gave a deeper greeting than his rank allowed, and before old Mops, who mixed himself up in no family feuds, but cordially invited him with his tail.--Not his pride kept him back from visiting the (assumed) parents of his adversary, but the anxious apprehension that the good people would perhaps worry themselves to death before him in an embarrassing conflict between politeness, between old love and new resentment. But he resolved by a letter to the noble-souled Parson's wife to satisfy his love and her sensibility. Then he came into the presence of his beloved!--I remarked day-before-day-before-yesterday, while reading the German-French history, where, as is well known, the crowned name Clotilda also reigns, by the redoubled beatings of my heart, how I should feel then, when I came actually to see this Clotilda, whom for three quarters of a year I have praised; for that Knef, and the dog too, are no knaves, and that the whole history has not merely transpired, but is still transpiring, I see by a hundred traits which no fancy can well invent. If the biographer should get sight of the heroine, there would arise nothing but a new volume and a new--hero, who would be--myself. She was sick; that evening had pounced like a vulture upon her heart, and had not yet drawn out its bloody claws. Her soul seemed only the angel that guards the earthly casing of a saint, from which the soul has fled. The Chamberlain met the Court Physician, as if he knew nothing of any duelling. What mothers generally do, that the father did; he forgave every one who was in high station and who wanted his daughter. The proposal which Victor at last made to him surprised him only because he had hitherto thought the latter postponed it merely on account of uncertainty respecting Clotilda's inheritance and relations in life. His answer consisted in infinite pleasure, infinite honor, &c., and other infinities; for with him all was one; hence, too, Platner asserts with justice that it is in fact only the finite of which man cannot conceive.[144] Le Baut would have handed over his daughter, even if he had not wished to; he could not refuse anything to one's face, not even a daughter. Moreover, no one could come and sue for Clotilda who would not have fitted into some one of his projects (the four chambers of his brain were full of them up to the ceiling). Naturally, therefore, a son-in-law was what he now most wished, since his daughter might actually die without his having yet used her for a leaping-pole and lever of his body,--and because, secondly, the duel-talk preyed upon his heart; not as if he had not by healthy _vermiform_[145] motions digested the _hardest_ things, but because, like cultivated men without honor, he loved to appear on occasion of