anger out of its cavern, as a doleful voice and long religious edicts. "For God's sake," cried Flamin, "let that be enough now,--God shall punish me, I will be lost to all eternity, I swear to you, if I ever touch _him_ even." This oath which escaped him was magnificent marshmallow-paste and soft ice-cream for the heated court-chaplain, who from forgetfulness of his order of business now adopted the opinion that the betrothal was already full well known to the Regency-Councillor. "Thinkest thou not, son," said he joyfully, "that such an oath refreshes and comforts an anxious father like the latter rain, especially as, since _her_ betrothal to him, I have had absolutely nothing better to look for than murder and assassination? Am I right or not?"--Flamin flung up by a single question the cover from this murderous armed spectre of his heart,--and now he heard his father no more; pale, full of convulsions, he sat there in silence,--the back of the chair cracked under his pressure,--he twisted and tied his watch-chain round his fingers, and tore it off and mashed the remnant again round the bruised finger and crushed it to pieces,--in his glassy eyes stood two heavy, rigid, cold drops,--his heart shrank up empty and spiritless before an approaching and frightful _death-chill_, which, when a friendship is murdered in a bosom, always precedes the burning wrath thereby excited.--Ah, who of us does not pity the unhappy, forsaken soul?--Eymann went away deceived, and took this calm for mere calm, and the broken and choked voice for emotion. And in this bloody state he was found by Matthieu, who had just come to announce to the Regency-Councillor, as if with twenty-four blowing postilions (from a note of the wife of the Chamberlain), Victor's victory over the whole of them. This fellow now first transformed the iceberg into a volcano, and made Flamin in his pent-up fury feel as if he could shatter to pieces one quarter of the world against another. Victor heard nothing now for some days. Flamin locked himself up. Matthieu visited him often, but not the house of the Apothecary. The crowned pair arrived at last at the baths of St. Luna.