The Minister's lady here could draw no inference, and begged him, with disguised astonishment, to come to the _agreeable_ matter. Comically on his face did the show of friendship wrestle with the expectation that he should be under the necessity immediately of being exasperated. He replied: "Is not _this_ an agreeable matter? The knight means it in earnest. He wished now to be privately espoused to her; after three years he retires from the order, and her fortune is made. _Vous êtes, je l'espere, pour cette fois, un peu sur mes interêts, ils sont les vôtres._" Her maternal heart, so suddenly and deeply wounded, wept, and could hardly be concealed. "Herr von Froulay!" said she, when she had composed herself a little; "I do not disguise my astonishment. Such a disparity in years, in tastes, in religion."[146] "That is the knight's affair, not ours," he replied, refreshed by her angry confusedness, and, like the weather, in his coldness threw only fine, sharp snow, no hail. "As to Liana's heart, I beg you just to sound that." "O, that innocent heart? You are mocking!" "_Posito!_ so much the more gladly will the _innocent_ heart reconcile itself to make her father's fortune, if she is not the greatest egotist. I should never love to constrain an obedient daughter." "_N'epuiséz pas ce chapitre; mon cœur est en presse._ It will cost her her life, which already hangs by such frail threads." This allusion always struck the fire of wrath from his flint. "_Tant mieux_," said he; "then it will never go further than an engagement! I had almost said--_Sacre!_ and who is to blame for that? So it fares with me at the hands of the Captain too,--in the beginning my children promise everything, then they turn out nothing. But, madam," he said, swiftly and venomously collecting himself; and, instead of compressing his lips and teeth, merely pinching moderately the auditory organs of a sleeping lap-dog; "you alone indeed know, by your influence upon Liana, how to dress and redress everything. Perhaps she belongs to you by a still prior claim than to me. I am not then compromitted with the knight. The advantages I detail no further." His breast was here already warmed under the vulture-skin of rage. But the noble lady now indignantly rose, and said: "Herr von Froulay! hitherto I have not spoken of myself. Never will I counsel or countenance or consent to it,--I will do the opposite. Herr von Bouverot is not worthy of my Liana."