How must all this have won our friend's admiration for a youth whom he saw pass through his soul now as Charles Moor, now as Hamlet, as Clavigo, as Egmont! As regards the notorious masquerade-shot described in a former Jubilee period, our so inexperienced Hercules, dazzled as he was by the naked dagger of Cato, must have accredited that shot to such a kindred Heraclide, as one of his twelve tragical labors. The fee-court-provost Hafenreffer even tells me, Albano once disputed with the Vienna gentleman, who had long since let himself down from a schoolmaster to a schoolmate, about the finest ways of dying, and, in opposition to the tender Falterle, who declared _himself_ in favor of the sleeping-potion, declared himself on Roquairol's side, even with the stronger addition: "He should like best of all to stand on the top of a tower and draw the lightning on his head!" In this latter article he shows the high feeling of the ancients, who held death by lightning to be no damnation, but a deification; but might not physical causes also have had something to do with it, for his elbows and his hair often flashed out, in the dark, electric fire, and more than once a holy circle streamed out round his head even in the cradle? The Provost is strong for this view of the matter. Albano, at last, could find no way to cool his fiery heart but by taking paper and writing to the invisible friend, and giving it in charge to the gentleman from Vienna. Falterle, who was complaisance itself--and withal untruth itself, too--in spite of his aversion to Roquairol, took the letters with him, and was _heartily glad to do it_ ("I am quite at home at the Minister's," said he); but never delivered a single one of them, since he had as little influence in the proud Froulay-palace as with the son himself, and so he merely brought back with him every time a new and valid reason why Roquairol had not been able to answer: he was either too very busy, or in the sick-chair, or in company,--but every letter _had delighted him_; and our unsuspecting youth firmly believed it all, and kept on writing and hoping. It would have been handsomely done of the Legation's-counsellor, had he only, that is to say, if he could, been so obliging as to hand over to me Albano's palm-leaves of a loving heart; not for the archives of this book, but merely for my documents relating to the case, for the catalogue of petals, which I for my own private use am stitching and gluing together, of Albano's flowering-time. 20. CYCLE.