Schoppe had resolved not to trouble himself at all about the Knight,--who divided his evening between the Minister and Wehrfritz in Blumenbühl,--but to betake himself at once to the presence of the Princess Idoine with the great petition. First, however, he would get the Lector as porter or _billeteur_ of the locked court-doors, and as surety for his words. But Augusti was indescribably alarmed; he insisted the thing would not do,--a Princess and a sick young man, and an absolutely ridiculous ghost-scene, &c.; and his own father, indeed, already saw through it. Schoppe upon this became a spouting fire-engine, and left few curses or comparisons unused upon the man-murdering nonsense of courtly and female decorum,--said it was as beautifully shaped as a Greek fury,--it bound up the wound on a man's neck as the cook-women did on a goose's, not till after it had bled to death, so that the feathers might not be stained,--and he was as much of a _courtisan_, he concluded ambiguously, as Augusti, and knew what decency was. "May I not propose it to the Fürstinn, then, who certainly esteems him so highly?" Augusti said, "That does not alter the case." "Nor yet to Julienne?" "Nor yet to her," said he. "Nor yet to the most satanic Satan?" "There is surely a good angel between," replied Augusti, "whom you can at least with more propriety use as an intercessor, because she is under obligations to the Knight of the Fleece,--the Countess of Romeiro." "O, why not, indeed?" said Schoppe, struck with the idea. The Lector--who was one of those men that never use their own hands, but love to do everything by a third, sixth, farthest possible one, after a system of _handing_ analogous to the fingering-system--urged upon the reflecting Schoppe his ready willingness to introduce him to Linda, and her ability to do something in this "_épineuse affaire_." Schoppe went up and down in a state of unusual distraction between two opinions,--shook his head often and vehemently, and yet stopped suddenly,--fluttered and shook still more violently,--looked at the Lector with a glance of sharper inquiry,--at length he stood fast, struck down with both arms, and said: "Thunder and lightning seize the world! Done, then! So be it! I go right to her. Heavens, why am I then, so to speak, so ridiculous in your eyes--I mean just now?" The courtly Lector had, however, transformed the smile of the lips into a smile of the eyes only. On Schoppe's face stood the warmth and haste of the self-conqueror. As men can be at once hard of hearing amidst the common din of life, and yet open to the finest musical tones,[65] so were Schoppe's inner ears hardened against the vulgar noise of ordinary impulse, but drank in thirstily all soft, low melodies of holier souls.