The light which was brought in took away these dream-worlds. Matthieu and the Chamberlain's lady appeared also. We will not, however, in this soft mood, when one is precisely the severest against evil natures, say or think anything about the new couple which cannot help its contrast to our tenderness. Victor said this to himself, too, but more than once; because the Apothecary's lyingly alleged engagement of Clotilda to Matthieu impressed itself upon him in the liveliest colors, as resembling that platonic union, in which the pure spirit, driven out of its ether and with crooked-up wings, is immured in an unclean body. Clotilda came back. She was in a state of embarrassment towards Victor, merely because he was in one, or was to be still more so by her side in the sleigh,--the swollen ball of her eye she withdrew from the light. As condensation of tears, like inspissation of milk, oppresses and destroys; his sadness, repressed and drawn back into his innermost being, sought an outlet through the voice, which was vehement and abrupt; through the motions of the body, which were quick; even through vivacity of expression;--in short, it was well that they started. He thought the opposite again, when he stood behind her on the sleigh. The night seemed to have withdrawn behind the clouds, whose wide arch occupied the heavens. He could not hunt up any subject of conversation, let him think as much as he would,--he ran through Clotilda's, Victor's, all his acquaintances' lives,--nothing occurred to him. The reason was, that his thoughts, which he sent out on this errand, returned every minute without his knowledge, and hung like bees on Clotilda's noble profile, or on her soft eye, or buried themselves in that tear of hers which had fallen on his hand, and in the whole ethereal sea of to-day's tones. The dark heaven above him finally put into his head Emanuel's last communication, and he could relate to her out of that the blind youth's initiation into the highest thought of man. Clotilda listened to him with delight, and at last said: "No one is more fortunate than a pupil of such a teacher: but he must never go into the world,--there he will be so no longer. His teacher has given him too soft a heart; and a soft heart, as you yourself say, hangs, like soft, fruit, so low down, that every one can reach and wound it; the hard fruits hang higher." They had arrived now at the hard fruits of the capital, and her remark was her own history. But the new scenes,--the rattling carriages and rustling dresses,--the much ado about little or nothing,--the hall-lights like systems of fixed stars,--the double mouth-_un_harmonicas,--the masculine court-fauna,--the feminine court-flora,--the whole mobilized pleasure camp,--this din of a fair drowned the muffled echo which passed to and fro between two harmonious souls.