"There is, indeed, a great advantage in first letting thoughts sleep and then taking them up again," answered my foster-sister with a phlegma that surprised me more and more. "Yes, the method is a good one. That which, under the heat of inspiration may not have at first wounded us--sometimes shocks our senses when the inspiration has cooled down. If the test is useful in the instance of frivolous matters like verses, should it not be all the more useful when grave matters affecting our lives are concerned?" "Victoria, I do not grasp your meaning!" "I yesterday received from you a letter that ran thus: 'This evening I shall be in Treves unknown to anybody. I conjure you, in the name of the most vital interests of our beloved country, to receive me in secrecy, and not to mention the matter to anyone, not even to your friend Schanvoch. Towards midnight I shall await your answer. I shall be found wrapped in my cloak near your garden gate.'" "And you granted me the interview, Victoria. Unfortunately for me it led to no decisive results, and so, instead of my returning to Mayence, as I should have done, I find myself compelled to remain at Treves, seeing you demanded time until this morning to arrive at a conclusion." "I shall be unable to arrive at any conclusion before submitting your proposition to the test that we just spoke of. Tetrik, I let your offers sleep, or rather I slept with them. Repeat to me, now, what you said to me last night. Mayhap what wounded me then may no longer seem so objectionable--" "Victoria, can you joke at such a moment?" "She who, even before having had to weep over her father and her husband, over her son and her grandson, rarely laughed--such a woman will assuredly not choose the hour of eternal mourning to indulge in jokes. Believe me, Tetrik, I repeat it, your last night's propositions seemed so extraordinary to me, they have thrown my mind into such perplexity, they have raised such strange thoughts, that instead of uttering myself under the shock of my first impressions, I prefer to forget all that we said, and to listen to you once more, as if you broached those matters for the first time." "Victoria, your eminent intellect, your powerful mind that has always been prompt and unerring in taking a decision, did not, I must confess, prepare me for such caution and hesitation." "Simply because never before in my life, now a long one, have I been called upon to utter myself upon questions of such moment." "Pray, remember that yesterday--" "I wish to remember nothing. To me our last night's interview is as if it had not been. Consider that it is now midnight, Mora has just let you in by the garden gate, and has brought you to me. Speak--I listen." "Victoria--what is it that you have in mind?" "Be careful--if you refuse to broach the matter in full, I might give you the answer that my first impressions dictated--and you know, Tetrik, that when I once utter myself, I do so irrevocably."