Matthieu said it would be a long story, and it was a bold step to entreat so much attention on the part of his Highness. He began with reporting what--the Dog-Post-Days have hitherto reported. He lied very little. He intimated that, in order to _break off_ Flamin's love for his unknown sister Clotilda,--at least he wanted to _increase_ it,--he had tried to make him jealous, but had not been able to set him at variance with any one except the lover; nay, it had not even helped matters at all that he had let him be himself an ear-witness of the very pardonable infidelity of Clotilda, but that his friend had at the very last manifested a rage at his sister's betrothal, which he had been able to appease in no other way than by the illusion of a disguised duel with the father. For in order to prevent a second fight between father and son; he had himself undertaken it, but unhappily with too disastrous an effect. So far the noble Mat. The true circumstances, which are familiar to us, I suppress. January, who was now favorably inclined toward the Evangelist for the removal of a fear into which he himself had thrown him, put to him the natural question, why Flamin took upon himself the murder.--Matthieu: "I fled at once, and it was not in my power to prevent his untruth, which I could not have looked for; but it was in my power to refute it."--January: "Go on in your frankness; it is your vindication; do not evade!"--Matthieu, with a freer mien: "What I had to say I have already said in the beginning, for the sake of saving him; and now he is saved." January went back in thought, could not comprehend, and begged, "Make yourself a little more clear."--Matthieu, with the designed look of a man who prepares silverings-over of his story: "From magnanimity he would have died for him (Mat) who had sinned for him, did not his friends come to the rescue." January shook his head incredulously. "For," the other continued, "as he knows not his high rank, he more readily adopted certain French principles, which would have _alleviated_ for him his death quite as much as certain Englishmen would have made use of them with the people to prevent it." As a proof, by the way, he adduced the blowing-up of the powder-house. January saw with astonishment a light glide into a dark cavern, and saw far into the cavern.