Liana importuned her brother, till he promised to do something to please his father; he composed, for the purpose, a family-piece, in which he introduced the whole confession-night between himself and Albano, only he converted Albano into a sister. Liana gladly studied this part also for the birthday, although she had to deliver the blooming vest. The Minister, contrary to expectation, accepted the vest, the Captain and his hand-bill for the evening's performance, graciously; for he was wont, on former occasions, like some other fathers, to growl the louder the more his children stroked him. He danced away like a Polack right merrily with his family, and stuck the rod[139] behind the fur. Nothing worse at this moment revolved in his head than the question, where it would be best to open the amateur theatre, whether in the _Salon de Lecture_ or in the _Salon des bains domestiques_; for the two halls were entirely distinguished from one another, and from the other chambers, by their names. The day came. Albano, whose invitation Charles had to extort, because the Minister, out of pride, hated his pride, brought with him, unfortunately, in his soul, the tone which Liana had given him the last time to carry home with him. His hope had hitherto lived upon this tone. O blame him not for it! The airy nothing of a sigh bears often a pastoral world or an orcus on its ephemeron's-wing. Everything weighty may, like a rock, be placed on a point, whereupon a child's finger can set it in rotation. But the tone had died away. Liana knew no other way than that, in the visiting congregation,--of whose moral pneumatophobia,[140] after all, she was not aware in its full extent,--one should hide every religious emotion behind the church fan. Boxes, pit, and farthing gallery were, almost at the usual play-hour, set off and filled out with Gratulantes, all fit to be canons. The German gentleman was made particularly prominent by the rich and insolent ostentation of his circumstances. Of the visiting-company-lane it can, in passing, only be observed, that in it, as in the antiphlogistic system, _oxygen_[141] played the chief part, which, however, was given out less by the lungs than by the heart.