She seated herself at the embroidery-frame; and the mother soon launched the Count out into the cool, high sea of general conversation, into which only occasionally the son threw up a green, warm island. Alban looked on to see how Liana made her mosaic flower-pieces grow; how the little white hand lay on the black satin ground (Froulay's _thorax_ is to wear the flowers on his birthday), and how her pure brow, over which the curly hair transparently waved, bent forward, and how her face, when she spoke, or when she looked after new colors of silk, lifted itself up, animated with the higher glow of industry in the eye and on the cheek. Charles sometimes hastily stretched out his hand towards her. She willingly reached hers across; he laid it between his two, and turned it over, looked into the palm, pressed it with both hands, and the brother and sister smiled upon each other affectionately. And each time Albano turned from his conversation with the mother, and true-heartedly smiled with them. But poor hero! It is of itself a Herculean labor to sit idly by where fine work is going on, such as embroidery, miniature painting, &c.; but above all, with a spirit like thine, which has so many sails, together with a couple of storms in behind, to lie inactively at anchor beside the embroidery-frame, and not to be, say, a spinning Hercules (that were easy), but only one that sees spinning,--and that, too, in the presence of a great spring and sunset out of doors,--and, in addition to all this, in the company of a mother, so chary of her words (in fact, before any mother, it is of itself an impossibility to introduce an edifying conversation with the daughter),--these are sore things. He looked down sharply at the embroidered Flora. "Nothing pains me so much," said he,--for he always philosophized, and everything useless on the earth troubled him grievously,--"as that so many thousand artificial ornaments should be created in vain in the world, without a single eye ever meeting and enjoying them. It will touch me very nearly if this green leaflet here is not especially observed." With the same sorrow over fruitless, unenjoyed plantings of labor, he often shut his eyes upon wall-paper foliage, upon worked flowers, upon architectural decorations. Liana might have taken it as a painter's censure of the overladen stitch-garden, which, merely out of love for her father, she was sowing so full,--for Froulay, born in the days when they still trimmed the gold-lace with clothes, rather than the reverse, was fond of buttoning a little silk herbary round his body,--but she only smiled, and said, "Well, the little leaf has surely escaped that evil destiny: it _is_ observed."