He chose the latter (excepting with her) by way of drowning his dreams. He therefore flung about him with stories and healthy observations. Therefore he threw into the imperial military chest against sentimentalism this satirical contribution, that it was the March-gall or moist-gall in the human field, i. e. a spot that always remained damp, and on which everything rotted. As this availed nothing, he entered into alliance with whole states, and promised himself some help from remarking concerning them, that their summits, like forest-trees, had grown into each other, and that it had no effect to saw one through down below,--that the equality of kingdoms was a substitute or a preparation for the equality of ranks,--and that gunpowder, which had hitherto been the _sticking powder_ of the great powers, would finally burn out and heal the hydrophobous wounds of the human race. At last, when he plainly perceived that it helped him very little, as he expressed the conjecture that Europe would one day become the _North India_, and the same North which had once been the breaking-tools and building-materials of the earth would be so once more, but the North in the other hemisphere, he struck, with his chemical process, into the wet road, and (like a secretary of legation) instead of politics took--punch. But only cares, not melancholy nor love, can be drowned by drinking. The other spirits, dissolved in the nervous spirit, array themselves in a magically sparkling circle around every idea, around every emotion, which thou hast therein, as in breweries the lights, by reason of the steam; burn in a colored circle. The glass with its hot cloud is a Papin's digester[40] even to the densest heart, and decomposes the whole soul; the draught makes every one at once more tender and bold. A soft heart was of old ever associated with a bold, hardened fist. As it kept on snowing, he offered Clotilda for to-morrow his shell-shaped sleigh and himself (as he was, besides, invited to the ball) as knight-errant,--whereby he compelled the Evangelist to offer himself as sledge-gondolier to the stepmother. Clotilda withdrew now from the merry male company into the adjoining room, where her Agatha and all were,--it was not done from disapproval of decorous, manly festivity,--still less from embarrassment, as it is, in fact, easier, and made easier for her sex, to behave itself naturally under forty eyes than under four,--still less from inability to disguise her sisterly love towards Flamin; for her flying soul had long since learned to fold together its wings and hide its tears and wishes, brought up as she had been among _strangers_, trained in thorny relations and between discordant parents. She did it merely, like the Parson's wife, because it is a _British_ custom, that the ladies shall take themselves away from the men and their incense-kettle of punch.