Through Agatha came very soon an answer from Clotilda, superscribed by Emanuel, which was inwardly sealed in the style of ambassadors, geometrically cut, and calligraphically written, because ladies execute all things that require the attention of the senses better than we, and because they--for hardly four of my acquaintance need I except--are exactly the opposite of men, in that the better they think, the finer they write. Lavater says the handsomest painter produces the handsomest pictures; and I say, fair hands write a fair hand. Clotilda's letter sets itself with an ornamental belt and a live hedge full of blossoms across our Doctor's path and shuts him off from Maienthal. For it runs thus:-- "MOST WORTHY FRIEND,-- "Perhaps no maiden is so happy as a poetess; and I think, here in this charming valley one at last becomes both. You are happy everywhere, for you can be a poet even at a court, as your beautiful poetic epistle shows me. But fancy loves to paint from paint-boxes,--the true Maienthal cannot give yours so much as you know how to put into the three landscape-pictures of it. As often as you and I are obliged to make good the absence of the same things by imagination: only with you is the compensation greater than the sacrifice. "If I could by persuasion have procured you the pleasure of seeing Herr Emanuel, gladly would I have done it; but I was at last, from conscientious scruples, not eloquent enough to induce him to make the journey, which would expose his weak breast to the danger of bleeding to death. Regard him as a Spring, for which every year one must wait nine months.