Hardly had the Court appeased its first longing for the people with whom it stood for half a quarter of an hour on a confidential, conversational footing, when it came to itself again, and dispersed itself through the princely garden, in order to consume full as long a time in satisfying its longing after nature. A sponsoress of the sponsoress promised Christianity in the stead of Princess and child. The Princess herself attached the Minister to her as a chamberlain. The grand-god-father looked out into the prospect of a d--d long evening, in which he should be obliged to parade round her procession-banner. For the enjoyment of the evening there was a concert, and for the enjoyment of the concert card playing had been arranged; and for the enjoyment of the latter, the Princess had seated herself alone with Froulay, in order, during the general playing of cards and instruments, to have some inaudible conversation with him. Suddenly the two pounds which were hung up in his breast--for no heart, according to the anatomists, weighs more than that--became two hundred-weight heavier, when she asked him whether he was steadfast and could confide in her and dare for her. He swore that, if only as Princess, she might expect of his two-pounder any and every sacrifice and mark of veneration. She went on: she had some weighty things to intrust him with to-day about herself and the Prince; she wished, when the _Foule_ was gone, to speak with him alone; he need only go up the little stairway from the side of the garden to the door of the library-chamber; this was open; in the poetical bookcase on the left side was a spring in the wall, the pressure of which would open to him the tapestry door of the apartment, where he was to await her. Immediately she rose, presuming upon an affirmative. How it fared now with the two pounds of his sixty-four-ounce-heart can gratify none but his deadly enemy to realize. So much lay written before him with long, thick, stony letters, as on an epitaphium, namely, that after a few hours, when the other lords, in other respects still greater sinners than he, could snore away quietly in the pleasant ministerial houses which formed the court of the Palace, that then for him, innocent knave, the wolf-hour, that is to say, the shepherd's hour,[42] would so soon strike, when he on the most flowery meadow must kneel beneath the butcher's knife. But he--angry that his faith in female and princely impudence should prove a soothsayer--made silently all kinds of oaths to himself, that, even if as much were imposed upon him as on the greatest saints and universal philosophers, he would nevertheless behave like both, for instance, like old Zeno and Franz.