A fair man will throw all upon the Apothecary, who was Victor's moral and mechanical bed-cord, or helper out-of-bed; for as he had prefigured to him the noble Mat in a similar situation (but without the bed-cord), of course the abhorrence which Victor, some days before, had felt of the Evangelist's conduct, became in him a laming incapacity of copying it in the least a few days after.--O if we could only, a couple of days beforehand, see every sin, to which we are tempted by ourselves or others, actually committed by a true scamp, whom we spit upon! Could we then eagerly imitate the scamp? Finally, one needs only to cast a glance at Victor in his balcony, where he now sits in a singular barometrical condition, if one would pass judgment on his previous state. His present state, namely, is a mixture of emptiness, discontent (with himself and everybody), of increased love for Agnola, justification of this Agnola, and yet the _impossibility_ of imagining her a near friend, of Clotilda's. For myself, I shall never repent the little which I have hastily brought together, if I have shown up therein by a few happy hints how well my hero, in regard to his conduct _after_ the kiss, which must strike strict people of the world as singular, can plead a disagreeable combination of constraining circumstances, and if I shall, therefore, have succeeded in restoring to him, at the end of the twenty-seventh chapter, the respect which he had forfeited, by not wrapping round the princely ring; too large for his finger, the long silken threads of love, so as to make it fit.... 28. DOG-POST-DAY. EASTER-FESTIVAL. A dog-day so long and weighty as the twenty-eighth one may be allowed to break up into three holidays. FIRST EASTER-HOLIDAY. Arrival at the Parsonage.--Club of the Three Twins.--Carps.