The redness of mortification rushed over the Count's face at this artificial postponement of the acquaintance; he felt that, after such a tone from the heart, _he_ would have immediately, without a dead interim of five days, and without an _homage-day masquerade_ in a double sense, gone to his friend and become his. But now he swore no longer to run to meet him, but only to wait for him. However, the roused indignation soon subsided, and he began to invent fairer and fairer mitigations for the first leaf of the so-long-sought favorite. Charles might certainly, e. g. not wish to mix up the holy time of the first recognition with this bustle of taking the allegiance-oath,--or that first suicidal masquerade might have made every succeeding one an inspiring era of a new second life,--or he knew, perhaps, in fact, about Albano's birthday,--or, finally, this glowing spirit chose to run or fly on his own track. Meanwhile, his note made the Count reproach himself for his own letter, as if it had been a sin against his Schoppe; he held it to be a sin, in one friendship, to yearn after another; but thou mistakest, fair soul! Friendship has steps which lead up on the throne of God, through all spirits, even to the Infinite: only love is satiable, and, like truth, admits no three degrees of comparison; and a single being fills its heart. Moreover, Albano and Schoppe, in such a mutual metempsychosis of their ideas, and such a near relationship of their pride and nobility, held each other far more dear than they showed to each other. For, as Schoppe, in fact, showed nothing, one could love him in return only with the finger on the lip, but, perhaps, so much the more strongly. Albano was a burning-hot concave mirror, which has its object near, and represents it erect behind itself; Schoppe one which holds the object far off, and throws an inverted image of it into the air. On the evening before his birthday, and the day of allegiance, Albano stood alone at his window, and pondered his past,--for a last day is more solemn than a first: on the 31st of December I reckon up three hundred and sixty-five days and their fates; on the first of January I think of nothing, because, in fact, the whole future is transparent, or may be all out in five minutes;--while the vesper-bell pealed over the fast-closing twentieth year of his life, and the vesper-hour rose within him, he measured the _abside-line_[101] of his moral being, and looked up at the towering pile of the approaching morrow, which hung full either of spring-showers or hailstones. Never yet had he so tenderly surveyed the circle of his beloved beings, or glanced through the open doors of futurity, as at this time.