Augusti and the Minister's lady saw that something must certainly be done for Liana during the Minister's absence; and both wonderfully coincided in their project. Liana must go into the country this pleasant season,--she must muster up health for the wars that were in prospect,--she must be put out of the way of the knight's visits, which now the birthday would multiply fourfold,--even the Minister must have nothing to object to the place. And where can this be? Simply under the roof of the Director Wehrfritz, who cannot endure the German gentleman, because he knows his poisonous relation to the Prince. But of course there are first still other mountains to be climbed than that which lies on the way to Blumenbühl. The reader himself must now get over a low one; and that is a short comico-tragic Extra-leaf upon THE GREEN-MARKET OF DAUGHTERS. The following is certain: every owner of a very beautiful or very rich daughter keeps, as it were, a Pitt under his roof, which to himself is of no service, and which he must put to its first use after it has long lain idle, by selling it to a _Regent_.[150] Strictly and commercially speaking, daughters are not an article of trade; for the parental grand adventurers no one can confound with those female dealers in second-hand frippery, and stall-women, whose transit-business one does not love to name; but a stock, with which one gains in a South Sea, or a clod, wherewith one transfers symbolically (_scortatione_) real estate. "_Je ne vends que mes paysages et donne les figures par dessus le marche_,"[151] said Claude Lorraine, like a father,--and could easily say it, because he had the figures painted in his landscapes by _others_;--even so in the purchase or marriage-contract only the knightly seats are supposed, and the bride who resides upon them is thrown into the bargain. Even so, higher up, is a princess merely a blooming twig, which a princely sponsor plucks off and carries home, not for the sake of the _fruits_, but because a _bee-swarm_ of lands and people has attached itself thereto. If a father, like our Minister, has not much, then he can pawn his children, as the Egyptians did their parents (namely, the mummies of them), as mortgages and hand-pledges or imperial pawns, which are not redeemed.