Her quiet, reserved eyes, however, brought him to his senses; but still he could not help feeling glad that, as Flamin’s friend, he had some claim upon her attention and her society.  It seemed to him as if everything that she did was done by her for the first time in life; and he would no doubt have shown a strange embarrassment in her company if the Lord Chamberlain and his wife and a throng of guests had not come into the garden and surrounded him and distracted him by their compliments.  Recovering his self-possession, he concealed his real feelings by giving full play to his faculty for malicious and witty sayings.  But though he succeeded in amusing the company, he displeased Clotilda; for the talk fell on the topic of women.

“The thing which a girl most easily forgets,” said the Lord Chamberlain, “is how she looks; that is why she is always gazing into a mirror.”

“Perhaps that is also the reason,” said Victor, “why no woman regards another as more beautiful than she is.  The most that a woman will admit is that her rival is younger than herself.”

Nothing fell upon Clotilda—­and this is always found in the best of her sex—­more keenly than satire upon womankind, and though she concealed the fact that she both endured and despised this sort of wit, she began to distrust the lips and the heart of the young Englishman, and treated him during this time with such cold civility, that he had to exaggerate his wild gaiety in order to conceal the grief that he felt.

But as she was walking at evening in the garden, a loose leaf blew out of a book that she was holding, and Victor picked it up and read:  “On this earth man has only two and a half minutes—­one to smile, one to sigh, and a half a one to love; for in the midst of it he dies.”

“Dahore!  This is a saying of Dahore!” exclaimed Victor.  “Clotilda, do you know my beloved master Dahore?” Clotilda turned towards him, her face transfigured with a lovely radiance.  Their two noble souls discovered at last their affinity in their common love for the wise and gracious spirit who had nourished their young souls.  For some strange reason Lord Horion, as they found out as soon as they began to converse together in a sweet and sincere intimacy, had had them brought up by the same master; and Dahore, an eccentric, lovable man with a profound wisdom, had made them, in both mind and soul, comrades to each other, though he educated one in London and the other at St. Luna.

“He taught Flamin and me at the same time,” said Victor, looking to see what effect the name of his friend had on Clotilda.  She smiled sweetly, but mysteriously, when he went on to speak of his loving friendship for the son of Chaplain Eymann.

The next day he knew why her smile was so mysterious.  Lord Horion arrived from Flachsenfingen with some extraordinary news.  Flamin had been appointed a counsellor to Prince January.  Never had Victor in his wildest dreams of his friend’s advancement, imagined that he would obtain at a leap so high an important position as this.  The young Englishman himself had been sent to study at Goettingen in order that he might be qualified to act as the prince’s physician; but Flamin, without any labour, had suddenly obtained a place of authority almost equal to that occupied by Lord Horion.