Victor determined now to make only visits that annoyed himself and pleased his neighbor. The first was an extraordinary tribute of a visit to the Princess (for his daily portioning-tax[53] of calls on her now ceased). To be sure, the thick hour-watch of old Bee-father Lind was every minute an alarm-clock to hold up before him his former foolhardy jokes, his watch-enclosure, and love-letter to Agnola. I cannot avoid the apprehension that the reader may make a slip, and not dream with what heart Sebastian went to the Princess;--O, with one full of dumb apologies and--exculpations, with a distended breast full of proud confidence, and yet full of sympathetic mildness. Whence came this?--It came from the fair soul which now, reconciled and filled up with another's _love_, could wish nothing more but _friendship_, and which was now too happy to be inexorable. But he found in her apartment two cold, refined faces, which it is quite as hard to apologize to as to forgive,--namely, her own and that of Count von O. from Kussewitz, in whose house her transfer had taken place. Victor blushed; the Count appeared not to have the least knowledge of him,--they were not introduced to each other,--but talked together as genially as if they had been (especially as it made no difference),--and so, with cold feelings, and with the greatest indifference about their own and each other's anonymousness, they politely separated. Only Victor afterward worried himself with doubts whether he had not sooner than Agnola called the unknown Count by that title. For the rest, he now, for the first time since he had loved Clotilda, found the partition-wall between _love_ and _friendship_ with women to be very _visible_ and very _thick_: before that he could see through the partition-wall well enough. A woman cannot choose for herself a firmer or purer friend than another woman's lover. Victor must now also, and for still more urgent reasons, visit Joachime. The evil spirit, which, like the youngest councillors, always gives its voice first in man, made the motion that "he should indulge Joachime in the slight illusion of believing that he loved her."--As this did not pass, the _filou_[54] took another voice, and proposed that "he should punish her for her former ambiguity by the most unambiguous signs of his hatred."--But he followed willingly the good spirit which led him by the hand, and said on the way, "Go now to her,--disengage thyself from her without giving her any pain,--let thy hand glide gradually out of hers, and clear one finger after another, as maidens do with their natural hand, and assume the attitude neither of her enemy nor of her lover." He went to her house without any selfish consideration; for the latter would rather have prompted him to stay at home, and enjoy and turn over the leaves of the past and future, or else to quit the house and go to St. Luna, to sit down by Agatha beside the crape hat of Clotilda which she was studying.