January was now prepared to believe anything that explained the foregoing singular things. A lie which unties a knot is more credible to us than one which ties one. Matthieu went on: "He had attended all the republican _concerts spirituels_, in order to take measures against Flamin's catching the contagion; and he did not carry to an extreme friendship for the three Englishmen and the Lord's son (Victor), if he looked upon them and him more as tools of some other concealed hand, than as themselves workers on a plan.--This was confirmed by the misuse hitherto made of the innocent Flamin."--By way of excusing Victor, he said,--in doing which, he all along named him the Court-Physician, so that January, in his present mood, was more likely to think of a court-poisoner than anything else,--by way, then, of setting him in a favorable light, he said that individual was a mere lover of pleasure, and only carried out obediently what his father had sketched out for him,--that Victor had disguised himself as an Italian to watch the Princess, and afterward to report to the Lord, at whose behest he probably did it, in a secret interview on an island.--As Italian, he had handed the Princess a watch, in which he had covertly pasted a slip of paper, wherein he had forgotten the higher rank to flatter his own. The Prince, who loved his spouse with greater jealousy than his betrothed, swept the floor with heavy strokes of the turkey-cock's wing, and pulled out the point of his nose to an unusual length, and proudly inquired how he knew that.--Matthieu replied calmly, "From Victor himself; for the Princess herself knew nothing of it." ... The reader owes it to me, that he knows better about a thousand things.--Agnola certainly knew the contents of the watch very well; nay, I even imagine, that, when the enraged Joachime informed her of Victor's direct confession of his _concepit_, she had allowed Mat or Joachime to trace the present recipe, according to which the bridegroom here has to swallow Sebastian's _billet-doux_. --"On the contrary," he continued, "she had long after presented his sister the watch, together with the billet.--Joachime had taken it out in Victor's presence, and he had thought fit to confess to her freely that very thing, which neither she nor he himself had, out of respect, yet disclosed to the Princess.--Meanwhile his sister had _thereupon_ given him the slip,--_whereupon_ he had made advances to Clotilda, perhaps according to a paternal instruction to bring the brother into nearer relations.--But in every instance he mixed up with the paternal schemes of ambition his own of pleasure, and was well disposed, just as the Englishmen were, whom he held to be Frenchmen in disguise."