Some days after he was standing with the Princess and Joachime in a window of the Ministerial _Louvre_. The conversation was lively enough; the Princess counted over the shops in the market, Joachime was following with her eye the swift zigzag of a swallow, Victor was standing secretly on one leg (the other he set, only apparently and without resting on it, on the floor), to try how long he could hold out. All at once the Princess said, "Holy Mary! how can one carry round a poor child shut up so in a box!" They all peered out into the street. Victor took the liberty to remark that the poor child was "made of wax." A woman was carrying a little glass case hanging before her, wherein there slept a swaddled waxen angel; she begged, like the rest, as if for this child, and the little one supported her better than if it had been alive. The Princess called up the new apparition. The woman came in trembling with her mummy-chest, and drew back the little curtain. The Princess bent an artistically enchanted eye on the sweet slumbering form, which (like its wax material) seemed to have been born of flowers and reared in springtimes. All beauty penetrated deeply into her heart; hence she loved Clotilda so exceedingly and many Germans so little. Joachime was fond of only _one_ child and _one_ beauty,--and each was _herself_. Victor said, "This waxen mimic and copy of life had always made him sad, and that he could not even see his own wax counterfeit in St. Luna without shuddering." "Doesn't it stand in a frock-coat at the window of the parsonage?" asked Joachime, becoming much more pleasant. "Isn't it true," he asked in return, "that you thought, some days ago, it was I myself?" He guessed from her look her former error, which perhaps had contributed to excite her against him. The father confessor of the Princess now came up and added,--after his custom of being complimentary,--that, in order to save him the trouble of a sitting, he would draw him the next time merely from his wax image. The Pater was well known to be a good draughtsman. I let circumstances which are less important lie unrelated, and gayly proceed.