But here all his friends embraced him, in order to set limits to his ingenious frenzy,--and to press such an impassioned, true British heart to their own. The embrace softly warmed all his cold wounds, and he was healed, though exhausted; another's life grew into his, and love conquered death. The Englishmen, in whose eyes stood the tears of a double intoxication, could hardly tear themselves away from the humorous darling. Clotilda, who with her female friends overheard the funeral oration in the adjoining chamber, at first held them back beseechingly from opening it. But when Victor said, "Cold form, erect thyself, and show men the tears which flow from a tender heart that breaks for love,"--then she took leave of them with a hasty "good-night," unable to master an emotion which upheaved her whole being. When they reported to him the time of her withdrawal, then did he, who was now already so weary, weak, and tender, become inexpressibly so,--all the lights which his effort had brightened on his countenance seemed to melt away in love like moonlight in dew-drops,--he waited not for his chamber to be empty, but showed that which Clotilda in hers would conceal,--he could even contemplate the unveiled wax statue with softened spirit, and said smilingly: "I fancy, the reason why I have let the _whole_ of me be repeated in wax is the same for which the Catholic does it with single limbs, in order to hang them on a saint, and thereby give thanks or pray for recovery; or like the Roman Emperors, whose wax statues the physicians visited after the death of the original."[44] The company went away, and he was at last alone. The moon, which had risen at 11 o'clock and 57 minutes, just began to throw its still low and waning light up against the windows of Clotilda's sitting-room. Victor put out his night-lamp, and, in order not to sink with his still tossing, dreaming heart into the dreams of sleep, seated himself at the window, almost in the wonted place of his wax copy and in a similar attitude----when fate ordained, that he, who to-day had given out the wax mummy to be his own person, should now inversely be looked upon as the image--by Clotilda! She stood at some distance from her window, on which no light fell but that from heaven; Victor, as this latter could not yet reach him, was quite in shadow, and turned towards her with five quarters of his profile. Scarcely had he observed that she fixed upon him an unchanging glance, that seemed as if it would not only take him in but go through him, when he guessed that she confounded him with the man of wax; he also observed out of the corner of his eye that something white fluttered around her, i. e. that she often dried her eyes. But how would it have been possible for his fine feeling by the least motion to take away from her her error, and to make her blush with confusion for her innocent gaze! Another, e. g. the misunderstood Mat, would in such an emergency have composedly straightened himself up