But what further? The Vienna master--this I must still premise--was a vain fool (at least in matters of humility, for example, his pigmy feet, his literature, his success with women), and particularly loved, by familiar pictures of great ones and ladies, to have inferred his confederation with the originals. The poor devil was, to be sure, poor, and believed, with many other authors, that he--unlike Solomon, who prayed for wisdom and received gold--had inversely had the misfortune while supplicating for the latter to receive only the former. In short, on such grounds as these he would have been very glad, let it be observed in passing, to know that the belief prevailed in the house of Wehrfritz that he stood on very good terms with his former pupil, the Minister's daughter,--_Liana_, I think it was, if I read Hafenreffer's handwriting correctly,--and that he quite often saw her, and spoke with her mother. Add to this, that there was not one word of truth in the whole: through the temple in which Liana was there was no door-way for him. But so much the less could he let the Director get ahead of him, who often saw her, and always praised her more warmly at home, merely for the sake of scolding the rude innocence of Rabette, who had never been educated by anybody. The Vienna master wished also, of course, to draw the Count--to whom he only showed the coasts of Roquairol's isle of friendship afar off, but no point for landing--cunningly away from the brother through the sister (he had found it impossible longer to deceive and hold him back); for why did he paint it out before him at such length, how poisonously, some years before, the night-and death-chill brought on by that parting shot of a brother whom she too devotedly loved had fallen upon those tender, white leaves of her heart?