Albano's tossing soul imaged the confused court world as still more wild and misshapen than it was. He heard the princely cousins, even the future successor to chair and throne, wish their cousin Luigi health, a happy marriage, and sequel thereto, although they, through their friend,--a living succession-poison,[8]--had caused so much of these three things to be taken away from him that they could assign him precisely their cold-blooded kinswoman as crown-guard of their next succession. He heard the same marriage-songs from all court Pestitzers, who, like a muscle, manifested a special effort to make themselves short. He saw how lightly, coldly, and with what malicious pleasure, the Prince, although with the feeling that he should soon drown in his dropsy, his water or fat in the limbs, carried off all the lies. O, must not princes themselves lie, because they are eternally cheated? themselves learn to flatter, because they are forever flattered? He himself could not bring himself to cast so much as the smallest mite of a lying congratulation into the general treasury of lies. The Princess flung the Count--as often as it would do, and almost oftener--two or three looks or words; for this blooming one, among the throne-coasters, from whom one more easily hears an echo than an answer, was reminded only of his powerful father. The Captain--who, like all enthusiasts, and like moths and crickets, loved _warmth_ and shunned _light_, and because all people of mere understanding were tedious to him--complained several times to Albano, that the Princess displeased him with her cold, witty understanding; but the Count--out of regard for the beloved of his father, and out of hatred toward her sacrificial priests and butchers--could only pity a being, who perhaps must hate now, because her greatest love had set. How many noble women, who would otherwise have held it a higher thing to admire than to be admired, have become powerful, rich in knowledge, almost great, but unhappy and coquettish and cold, because they found only a pair of arms, but no heart between them, and because their ardently devoted souls met with no likeness of themselves, by which a woman means an unlike image, namely one higher than her own! Then the tree with its frozen blossoms stands there in autumn high, broad, green, and fresh, and dark with foliage, but with empty, fruitless twigs. At last they came out of the sweltry dining-halls into the fresh evening of Lilar, into the open air and freedom. Half indignant, half bewildered with love, Albano went to meet a veiled hour, in which so many a riddle and his dearest one were to be solved. What does man see before him, when with the thread in his hand he steps out of the subterranean labyrinth? Nothing but the open entrances into other labyrinths, and the choice among them is his only wish. 78. CYCLE.