For, in fact, he holds the hero of the Dog-Post-Days--who very willingly lets him--to be a little too stupid, merely because the latter was good-natured, humoristic, and confidential towards all men. In fact, life in the great world gave him, it is true, mental and bodily flexibility and freedom, at least greater than he would otherwise have had; but a certain external dignity, which he perceived in his father, in the Minister, and often even in Matthieu, he could never properly or long imitate; he was content to have a higher dignity within, and felt it almost ludicrous to be serious on the earth, and too small a thing to look proud. Perhaps it was for this very reason that Victor and Schleunes could not like each other; a _man_ of talents and a _citizen_ of talents hate each other reciprocally. Before I allow the Apothecary to point out all the threads of the Schleunes spider-web, I will merely explain why Zeusel was so all-knowing on this subject, and yet Victor so blind. The latter was so, because in the midst of his enjoyments he never set himself at all to the guessing out of indifferent or bad people; in fact, like a bird of paradise, he floated always in the air of heaven, far removed from the dirty ground, and, as all birds of paradise do on account of the looseness of their plumage, always flew _against_ the wind; hence, from a want of communication, he did not get _oral_ court news till all the Heyducs,[25] lackeys of pages, and stove-heaters had already read them black,--often did not get them at all.--The Apothecary is in the opposite case, because he has the bad eyes, it is true, but then the good ears of a mole, and because in the _camera-obscura_ of his congenial heart the forms of kindred tricks more readily image themselves; add to this, that he applies two long ear-trumpets--two daughters--to cabinets, or rather to their lovers, when they come out therefrom, and overhears by the tubes many a thing, of which I can avail myself grandly in the Third Part of this biography. There are men--he was one--who will hunt up intelligence without the least interest in its contents, and _personalia_ without _realia_, and who, with no curiosity about learning, seek to become acquainted with all learned men,--without any care for politics, to know all great statesmen,--and without the least love for war, to know all generals,--personally and by letter. It may be that many a reader of fine sense has already, from the foregoing, got wind of that which Zeusel will now disclose. I give the Apothecary's _exposé_ in the following abridgment:--