Our hero was received by the Princess in a more friendly manner than even by the Prince. Joachime, Clotilda's lieutenant in office, had, in addition to her cold angry friendliness, a _montre à régulateur_ rich in jewels. In a public place it costs less than in a cabinet to cover the inner man with the outer as with a theatrical mask. Victor, on whom, besides, every _sorrow_ produced the witty effect of _intoxication_, betrayed the former at most by the exuberance of his vivacity. A woman betrays herself by the opposite,--Clotilda by nothing. He expressed to her in the singular stunned state into which outer tones of joy and inner fantasies put one, when they come together like two streams meeting, the following ideas: "Were I the Goddess of delight (if there is one), I would have it strike three; round the chandeliers I would draw prismatic colors, or in fact would hang them up in the cabinets and diffuse through the dancing-hall with incense a magic twilight,--then I should have to set back the tones of the orchestra through so many apartments, that nothing of the music should find its way hither but a soft echo,--and then if in the glimmering maze, breathing throughout with melodies, the people did not, after some silent movements, feel like sinking away with ecstasy, I greatly mistake." ... "Add further," said she, "in order that we too may have one, that we stay here and observe the dissolving." But his composure hardly ever at any ball survived the minuet. After the first din was over, at least about the witching hour, his whole soul was always dissolved into a poetic melancholy which hardly left him the mastery of his eyes. Besides the tones, I can further adduce the _motion_ as an explanation of this phenomenon: all motion, in the first place, is sublime,--that is to say, of great masses; or rather every quick motion imparts to the object the greatness of the space hurried through: hence, in contrast with the end in view, objects in motion are more comic than those at rest. Secondly, the movement of men imaged to him their fluttering by, their fleeing into graves; often at night he would stop in sad musing under the windows of houses, where they were dancing in the second story, and look up, and the gliding by of heads in their movement was to him the mad dance of _ignes fatui_ in the churchyard.