many veiled sacrifices and dumb virtues, would he see reposing therein! --One must, at any rate, with the German Diet and its cross-benches; make no mystery of the fact, that Victor would not accept the ninth Electoral hat, or in fact the eighth and last, on condition of parting with the _crape hat_.... What can the thickest, heaviest crowns, said he, which have been exhibited to me in my travels, weigh in the one scale,--even supposing one should throw in also several tiaras and doges' caps with bows and papal hats,--if Clotilda's crape hat weighs down the other? As the reader has quite as much intelligence as I, let him decide the question.--This hat gave him an inexpressible longing for Maienthal, and was to him a dedicatory copper-plate which (as by an _investitura per pileum_) first presented Clotilda to him; he stood before this crown as an heir to the crown--every minute drew his coronation-chariot--with two big drops of joy, which the happy eye could not hold, and said slowly, gently shaking his head: "No, kind destiny gives me too much.--Ah, how can I deserve this soul from heaven?--I will merely say to her, I am thine! and by and by, some day, Thou art mine!" And when his fancy actually opened behind the crape-latticework the two great eyes which had once concealed behind it the tears of a rejected heart, and when he let the remote voice discourse again out of shadowy threads behind this nunnery-grating, then he could no longer restrain himself from writing,--so that he might thus go to Maienthal,--as he sat opposite the hat, his first letter to her, which I shall certainly get from the dog by to-morrow evening's post.-- I believe I have not yet said that Agatha handed him the hat, and that she invited him--it is now towards the end of April--to the birthday of her father on the 4th of May. Victor thought on the melancholy 4th of May of the year '92, and grew still more full of yearning for the friend who was torn from him. Before closing the chapter, I will only say to the younger Clotildas, the Vice-Clotildas, the illegitimate Clotildas, and the Counter-Clotildas, who have me and my chapters in their laps: Be cool. You cannot possibly carry the coldness of virtue too far, unless you absolutely set no limits to it. I will, on your account, dress up this doctrine in wise sayings and witty sentences, that it may be the better adapted to fans and albums.