But, good Zesara, supposing now thou art compelled, daily, to hear all this,--and supposing the master of accomplishments forgets not to depict, besides, how she has never grieved him with a disobedient look, or a tardiness, how cheerfully she always brought him the paper-marks of the lessons, and, at the end, her schooling-money or an invitation,--and how carefully, mildly, and courteously she behaved toward her servants, and how one must have thought her heart could not be warmer than her very philanthropy made it, if one had not seen her still more ardent filial affection for her mother;--good Zesara, I say, what if thou hearest all this in addition to thy romances, and that, too, of the sister of thy Roquairol; for every one, if it is only half practicable, loves to spin himself into one chrysalis with the sister of his friend,--and beside all this, of a maiden in the consecrated Linden-city, about which Don Gaspard, as the old Prussians[37] did about their sacred groves, draws additional mystic curtains; and, what is harder than all, just after the turning-point of thy seventeenth year, Zesara, when the monsoons and spring winds of the passions already sweep over the waves of the blood! For, of course, at an earlier period, in the midst of the learned club of so many linguists,--i. e. books of linguists, of eclectics, upper-rabbins,--of ten wise men from the East and from Greece, and, by reason of the uncommonly dazzling _Epictetus'-lamps_ which the said Decemvirate of wise men had lighted at the day-star of the wise ones,--at such a time, I say, it was hardly to be expected of thee that love's little Turin-lantern, which he kept as yet unopened in his pocket, should strike thy eye very strongly! But now, my dear, now, I say! Truly, nowhere could any of us find less fault, if we are uncommonly attentive to it, with what he does in the 21st Cycle, than in this 20th. FOOTNOTES: [35] The preceding fine October days, as well as the Dog-holidays and April, and, in short, the rest of the previous part of the year, were created on the above-mentioned 22d October, and the said day itself also, after their time. I thus easily shift the inquiry about all that earlier period. For if any one dates the world differently, e. g. from the 20th March, as Lipsius and the Fathers did, still he must fall in with my after-creation of the forepart of the year, when I thrust home upon him with his own previous question. [36] It used to be believed that a ruby gave pleasant dreams. [37] Arnold's Ecclesiastical History of Prussia, Vol. I. FOURTH JUBILEE. HIGH STYLE OF LOVE.--THE GOTHA POCKET-ALMANAC.--DREAMS ON THE TOWER.--THE SACRAMENT AND THE THUNDER-STORM.--THE NIGHT-JOURNEY INTO ELYSIUM.--NEW ACTORS AND STAGES, AND THE ULTIMATUM OF THE SCHOOL-YEARS. 21. CYCLE.