Fortunately this nut-tree, which threw an unwholesome, frosty nut-shadow on the whole flowerage of love and poetry, soon transplanted itself back again among more congenial guests. The Minister's lady, after the first expressions of courtesy, directed herself more to the Lector, whose correct, civilian's measure accorded entirely with her religious one; especially as only he could ask and condole with her about Liana. She replied, that this room of Liana's had been left exactly as it was the evening the blindness came on, in order that, when she recovered, it might remain for her a pleasant remembrancer, or a mournful one for others, if she did not. O, deeply moved Albano, if every absence glorifies, how much more must it do so with so many traces of the beloved object's presence! I confess, except a loved one, I know of nothing lovelier than her sitting-room in her absence. On Liana's work-table lay a sketched outline of a Christ's head near the open Messiah,--a folded walking-veil, together with the green walking-fan, with inscribed wishes of female friends,--some cut-out envelopes,--the gossiping letter of one of Froulay's tenants,--a whole lacquerwork sheep-fold, with wagon, stalls, and house, with whose Lilliputian Arcadia she had proposed to please Dian's children,[66]--a plucked leaf from the thinning album of a female friend, which she had trimmed with an India-ink flower border and then planted full of fair wishes, of which fate had robbed her own life. Ah, beautiful heart, how fondly would I sketch and hand round something like a tabular view of all the little mosaic of thy lightsome past, had the fee-provost entered more intimately into these matters! But what moves me and the Count more deeply is a framed embroidery, on which her needle, like an ingrafting-knife, had, on that dark day, ingrafted a rose with two buds, and which wanted nothing more but the thorns. O, _these_ had destiny only too fully developed on thy roses of joy, and then pressed them so deeply through thy breast even to the heart!