He is very prominent. Upon such a new-comer, people, in a residence-city, have already, before he has fairly given the driver his drinking-money, got all possible light of nature and revelation; nineteen of the company were fastened upon him as his moral odometers. The boldness of his nature and his rank made up with him for worldly tact, which was missed nowhere except in this, that he never took sides except in the very strongest manner, and always ran off into general and cosmopolitan observations. But see, I pray you!--O, I wish Liana could see it,--how the rosy glow and the fresh green of his healthiness shines among the yellow sicklings of the age, out of whom, as from ships on the African coast of youth, all the pitch that held them together had run out,--and how the cheek-redness of spiritual health, a tender, ever-returning suffusion (from anxiety about Liana) graces him, whereas most of the world's people at the table seem, like cotton wool, to take all colors more easily than _red_! He looked and listened, against the salvation-laws of visiting, too much to Liana. She ate, under the heightened redness of a fear of mistaking, only sparingly, but without embarrassment; the Lector, with easy hand, barred up against her the smallest road to error. What astonished him was, that she covered such a sensitive and easily weeping heart with such an unembarrassed cheerfulness of countenance and conversation. Young man! _that_ is, with the most delicate maidens, free from pangs of love, no covering and disguise, but an enjoying of the moment and habitual courtesy! She retained so considerately (what she had probably learned beforehand) the relative rank of the familiar voices, that she never directed her answer to the wrong place. She, however, looked often to her mother with full eyes, and smiled then still more serenely, not, however, for the purpose of deceiving, but from real, hearty love. Touching her salad, the best and most fit to be a prince's table-guest among my female readers, who had seen her mix it, would have taken several fork-loads thereof. Uncommonly charming was it, when, growing more earnest and red, she drew off her glove before the blue, celestial hemisphere of glass; with white hands and supple arms, without a silken fold, worked away in the green, between the blue of the glass and the black of the silk; considerately felt for the vinegar-and oil-castors, and poured out as much as her practice (and the deciphered advice of the Lector,--at least so it seems to me) directed. By heavens! the dressing is, in this case, the salad; and the vain Minister, who had no understanding of pictures, had a great eye for things that would make good pictures.