In order, however, not to let his visit have too much weight in the eyes of Joachime, he proposed to himself to beg of her for some weeks the views of Maienthal, which hung in her room. O Maienthal, how much thou must have, if the very sketch of thee makes one so happy!--But his visit turned out singularly. He wished on the way that he might find in her toilette-chamber the fine fool and the fragrant fool and more stuff;--there was nothing there. She received him with a careless gayety, as if she were the Columbine[55] and the Medicus the clown. He, however, was going merely to execute the gradual weakening or _diminuendo_ of his moral dissonances; therefore he became, by his constant looking off at his note-stand, and at the score of his inner harmony, somewhat stiff and awkward in his playing. Women easily distinguish the coldness of reason (if only by the very want of extravagance) from coldness of mood. Now he asked for the views. Joachime did not grow cooler, but warm, i. e. serious, and lifted up her watch in the hollow of her hand, and said, looking at it, "I give you as many minutes' grace as you have stayed away days, to excuse your staying away." Victor accepted without embarrassment--like every one who acts only according to _one_, either good or bad, principle--the allowed time for decision, and took the _montre à régulateur_ from under the looking-glass, that Joachime might not cheat him. This cursed watch of the Princess grinned at him everywhere, like a percussion-ball and powder-mine under his feet. He wound it up just to have a chance to open this Nuremberg egg (as they used to call watches), and finally for once to examine whether the love-declaration, i. e. the _punctum saliens_ of love, or the Cupid,--who also, according to Plato, came out of an egg,--was still in there. "I know well enough--he said to himself--it has been gone this long time, but I'll just try it." There might have been, indeed, a question whether it was the same watch, as the one in Tostato's shop had no diamonds,--had there not come fluttering out from this Pandora's box, so soon as it was opened at the window, a little thin piece of paper half as big as a butterfly's wing, and as long as the stamen of a tulip.--The little leaf took flight at every breath of wind.----Joachime caught the thing,--read the thing,--found the declaration of love still there,--took it for one which he was just making to _herself_, by way of atoning for his absence, and which, for the sake of the wit (he might allude to its heart-shape), he had been trying to incorporate into the watch....