So stood matters, when a little accident made our Victor happy again. Only I must say beforehand that, independently of that, he was not at all unhappy: for a lover never worries himself about anything, certainly not about a court; he has on Cupid's bandage, and willingly forgives Fortune and Justice theirs. And the moral Easter-eve bonfire melted--just as superstition ascribes to the physical one a peculiar power--all the ice wherewith they dammed up Victor's blood into the lymph of joy; the Easter-wind--which, according to the weather-prophets, continues till Whitsuntide--set his old joy-flowers in motion, and wafted forth from them the pollen of future ones; the snow dissolved on the hot spring awaking from its winter sleep, and the first flowers and the thousand buds gave all hearts energies and hopes and love. O when Victor looked out of doors toward the green-growing path which, with fresh sap-colors, (for in spring the foot-paths grow green first,) would fain lure and lead him out of the midst of the after-grass heath to the Eden of Maienthal,--and then when he turned round glowing and thirsting, and ran over into the sketched Maienthal, into the borrowed views, and there climbed every colored mountain, and encircled every dotted-out garden with his fingers and fancies,--then he did not think himself that a little accident could make him still more joyous.--And yet it did. It is not well done of me that I always--and it is a thing I have become very much accustomed to in this biography--call that an _accident_ which is a direct great-grandchild by blood of former chapters, and which really must come. For the crape hat--that was the accident--must indeed come, because it was bespoken. It was, however, the--original itself. Besides, in so small a time no hat could have been made by the nimblest master-builder of finery; and yet Sebastian never would have thought, had not traces of powder and opened lace-lattices compelled him, to distinguish the old hat from a new one. In short, Clotilda had given it to Agatha, who could not conceal from her for whom she was taking the copy, _before_ the _third_ Easter-holiday, for the purpose of letting her copy it, and _after_ the aforesaid day had written to her to send her the copy and pass off the original upon the Medicus for the imitation, (as in the case of the wax-statue,)--and why, perhaps?--O, of that her friend had a sweet consciousness; she was sorry that she could not give a shy, delicate heart anything, not a sound, nor a glance, nor a joy, nor a reminiscence of the fairest evening, except its mere autumnal after-flora, mere silk-flowers sewed together in imitation of that flower of joy, the taffeta shadow of a taffeta-shade.... No, she did violence to herself, in order to give the mute darling at least more than a copy of the shadow. O, if the loving, closed heart of a good woman should open before a man, how much controlled tenderness, how