"_O, finissez donc?_" said the Countess, who had bent back with a shudder, and slowly shaken her Venus head. "Frightful! Your petition?" "Only the Princess Idoine," said he, coming to himself, "can fulfil it, and rescue him, by appearing to him, and whispering him peace, since she is said to be such a near ass-[66], cos-[67], copy, and mock-sun of the deceased." "Is that your petition?" said the Countess. "My greatest," said Schoppe. "Has his father sent you hither?" said she. "No, I," said he; "his father, to be clear and free and explicit with you, disapproves of it." "Are you not the painter of the sneezing self-portrait?" she asked. He bowed, and said, "Most certainly." Having replied that in an hour he should hear the decision, she made him a short, respectful, leave-taking obeisance, and the simple, noble form left him gazing after her in rapture; and he was provoked that the childish mirrors round about should dare to send after the rare goddess so many shadows of herself. At home he found, indeed, the crazed young man, whose ears alone lived any longer among realities, again on his knees at the sixth stroke of the clock; but his hope bloomed now under a warmer heaven. After an hour, the Lector appeared, and said, with a significant smile, the thing was going on right well; he was to get an opinion from the physician, and then the decision would be accordingly. Herr von Augusti gave him, with courtier-like explicitness, the more definite intelligence, that the Countess had flown to the Princess, whose regard for her future travelling companion she knew, and told her she would, in Idoine's case, do it without hesitation. The Princess considered with herself a little, and said this was a thing which only her sister could decide. Both hastened to her, pictured to her the whole case, and Idoine asked, with alarm, how she could help her resemblance and her well-meant journey hither, that they should wish to draw her so deeply into such fantastic entanglements. At this moment Julienne came in, pale, and said she had only since morning received intelligence of this, and it was the duty of such a good soul to grant the apparition. Then Idoine, considering herself and everything, answered, with dignity, it was not at all the unusualness and impropriety of the thing which she dreaded, but the untruthfulness and unworthiness, as she would have to play false with the holy name of a departed soul, and cheat a sick man with a superficial similarity. The Countess said she knew of no answer to that, and yet her feelings were not against the thing. All were silent and perplexed. The conscientious Idoine was moved in the tenderest heart that ever hung trembling under the weight of such a decision upon a life. At last Linda said, with her sharp-sightedness, "Properly speaking, however, after all, there is no moral man to be deceived in the case, but a sleeper, a dreamer; and imagination and delusion are not, in fact, going to be strengthened in