Albano read with outward and inward glow, not toward the reading Princess, but toward the Princess she personated, from a habit of his heart which life always set a-glow; and the Princess read the _rôle_ of her _rôle_ very well, of course. Her artistic feeling told her, even without the prompting of tender sensibility, that in Goethe's Tasso,--which, for the most part, is related to the Italian Tasso, as the heavenly Jerusalem to the Jerusalem delivered,--the Princess is almost Princess of Princesses. Never did the god of the muses and of the sun pass more beautifully through the constellation Virgo than here. Never was veiled love more radiantly unveiled. The Minister read off the powerful proser Alphonso, as he scolds at Tasso and Albano, as well as a trumpeter of cavalry reads the notes which are affixed to his sleeve; in fact, he found the man quite sensible. The younger[36] Princess might, in the general poetic concert, have done her share of the talking some quarter of an hour, more or less, when she suddenly threw down, in a lively manner, the beautiful volume of Goethe's works, of which there were three copies there, and said, with her impetuosity, "A stupid part! I cannot abide it!" All the world was silent. The senior[37] Princess looked at her significantly; the junior Princess looked at _her_ still more significantly, and went out, without coming back again. A court dame took up the reading, and went calmly on. To most of those present this interlude was properly the most interesting; and they willingly continued to think of it during the reading of the latter part. The Princess, who had long believed the Princess loved the Count, was delighted with the inconsiderateness of her adversary. Albano, although her warm eye had struck him of old, explained to himself the absconding on the ground of chagrin at the subordinateness of her part in the reading, and the general incompatibility of the two women; for while Julienne, at her own expense, slighted the Princess, and took little pains to conceal her opinion, so also did that of the Princess appear involuntarily. So soon as one party manifests its hatred, the second can hardly conceal its from the third. When Albano came home, he found the following leaf on his table:-- "The P---- decoys thee; she loves thee. With _éclat_ she will send in the next place the M---- back, in order to give bold relief to her virtue, and produce an imposing effect upon thee. Shun her! I love thee, but differently and eternally. "_Nous nous verrons un jour, mon frère_."