"It is, at all events, good to have been there," said the old woman.
"Certainly," said he; "for it is good not always to stay there."
"But there are persons," said Clotilda, "who cannot make themselves happy there, simply because they do not love to be there."
That was very fine and forbearing, but intelligible only to Victor's heart.
"I would advise a fine enthusiast" (said he, and made no account, as usual, of the apparent contradiction between Victor's life and Victor's opinions) "or a fiery poet to stay at home,—the flights of either, instead of pas, would be in court-life what an hexameter is in prose, which the critics cannot bear,—and to the soul with the softest sensibilities I would say, Be off with them! the heart is there treated as a superfluous member, as in the six-fingered family in Anjou the sixth finger is." ...
The old woman shook her head quickly to the left.
"And yet," he continued, "I would take all three for a month to court and make them unhappy, in order to make them wise."
The Chamberlain's family could not accommodate themselves to Victor's style so well as my reader, who to my exceeding delight so cleverly distinguishes humor and the talent of looking at all sides of a thing from flattery and skepticism. Clotilda had slowly shaken her head at the last proposition. In fact, all battled to-day for and against him, in that partial tone which women and relatives always assume towards a stranger, when an hour before they had carried on the same suit, but with a practical application, with their own kin.
Victor, who had long been fearing: that he should become disconcerted, went off at last to where he had been so often looking,—to the chess-table, where they were playing with the greatest desire to—lose. The Chamberlain,—we all know how it was with him; he wrote nothing but commendatory letters for the whole world, and the sacramental cup would have been more to his taste, could he have drunk from it a toast to some important man's health,—that personage only promoted as well as he could with the dry chess-statues another's success at the expense of his own; he was glad to lose, provided only Matthieu won. And then, too, he resembled those shamefaced souls who love to bestow their benefits secretly, and he could not find it in his heart to tell his adversary that he was securing him the victory; he took almost greater pains to conceal himself as a courtier than to conquer himself as a Christian. Such a love ought, it would seem, to have been more warmly requited than by open malice; but Mat had the same object in view, and declined the victory which the other threw into his hands, like a real sharper. In vain did Le Baut devise the best moves for checkmating one's self. Mat matched him with still better ones, and threatened every minute to be checkmated too. And every one pities the poor Chamberlain, hunted about on the chess-board, and fearing, like a coquette, that he shall not be conquered. It became at length, for a soft-souled eye, which certainly forgives the weak one sooner than the wicked one, no longer endurable; Victor, with a thousand excuses to the weak one and full of malice toward the malicious one, entered into the steeple-chase, and obliged the Page to accept his advice and his charitable subsidies, and to lay hold of military operations which he proposed of such worth, that the man with the office of Chamberlain's key, at last, in spite of his fears and in spite of the worst prospects,—lost the game. All present saw through all present, as princes do through each other in their public—playbills.
He got at last his farewell audience, but very small solace. The fair form, beneath which all his ideals of beauty stood only as heraldic bearers and caryatides, was even colder than at the reception, and persisted in being only the echo of the parental courtesy. The only thing which still kept him up was a—thistle: namely, an optical one which had been sowed on the mosaic floor. That is to say, he took notice that Clotilda during the farewell avoided with her foot this flower-piece (which she certainly must have known) as if it were the original. In the evening he drew his chains of inferences, as they are taught in the universities; he engrafted upon this mock-thistle all the roses of his destiny. "She was certainly distrait, and why? I ask," he said, speaking into his pillow; "for, besides, they have not yet detected my feelings over yonder," he asserted, as he laid himself on the second pillow. "O thou sweet eye that went down on the thistle, rise again in my sleep, and be the moon of my dreams!" said he, when he was already half-way into both. It was merely out of modesty that he thought he was not discovered, because he did not look on himself as remarkable enough to be observed.