If, however, a reader is differently constituted,--a poet, perchance,--or a lover,--or very tender,--or like Victor,--or like me; then, indeed, let him without scruple listen with still and melting soul to Franz Koch, or--for to-day is just the time when he is not to be had--to _me_. The jolly Englishman had sent this harmonist to Victor with the card: "The bearer of this is the bearer of an echo which he carries in his pocket." Victor preferred, therefore, to take him over to the friend of all sweet tones, that her departure might not deprive her of this melodious hour. It seemed to him like going through a long church, when he entered Clotilda's Loretto-chapel; her simple chamber was like Mary's sitting-room, enclosed with a temple. She had already completed arranging herself in her black ornamental dress. A black costume is a fine eclipse of the sun, wherein one absolutely cannot take one's eyes away from it: Victor, who, with his _Chinese_ regard for this color, brought with him to-day to this magic a defenceless soul, an enkindled eye, grew pale and confused at the radiant face of Clotilda, over which the trace of a trouble that had rained out, hovered like a rainbow over the bright, blue sky. It was not the cheerfulness of light thoughts, which every maiden takes on when she dresses herself, but the cheerfulness of a pure soul full of patience and love. He trembled lest he should tread on two kinds of thistles,--on the painted ones of the floor, over which he took care to step, and upon the satirical ones of the fine observers around him, with which he was always coming in contact. Her stepmother was still upon the stucco-work and finishing of her worm-bag,[45] and the Evangelist was in her toilet-chamber as assistant-priest and collaborator in the finery department. So that Clotilda had still time to hear the performer on the mouth-harmonica; and the Chamberlain offered himself to his daughter and my hero for he was a father of good breeding towards his daughter--as part of the audience, although he could make little out of music, table- and ball-music excepted.