Thus it is when Venus bites a veritable ancient male.  She puts her venom in a magnificent beast, not a pathetic Phaedra.  She does it rarely, for though to be loved by a bitten giant is one of the dreams of woman, the considerate Mother of Love knows how needful it is to protect the sentiment of the passion and save them from an exhibition of the fires of that dragon’s breath.  Do they not fly shrieking when they behold it?  Barely are they able to read of it.  Men, too, accustomed to minor doses of the goddess, which moderate, soften, counteract, instead of inflicting the malady, abhor and have no brotherhood with its turbulent victim.

It was justly matter for triumph, due to an extraordinary fervour of pleading upon a plain statement of the case, that Alvan should return from his foray bringing with him an emissary deputed by General von Rudiger’s official chief to see that the young lady, so passionately pursued by the foremost of his time in political genius and oratory, was not subjected to parental tyranny, but stood free to exercise her choice.  Of the few who would ever have thought of attempting, a diminished number would have equalled that feat.  Alvan was no vain boaster; he could gain the ears of grave men as well as mobs and women.  The interview with Clotilde was therefore assured to him, and the distracting telegrams and letters forwarded to him by Tresten during his absence were consequently stabs already promising to heal.  They were brutal stabs—­her packet of his letters and presents on his table made them bleed afresh, and the odd scrawl of the couple of words on the paper set him wondering at the imbecile irony of her calling herself ‘The child’ in accompaniment to such an act, for it reminded him of his epithet for her, while it dealt him a tremendous blow; it seemed senselessly malign, perhaps flippant, as she could be, he knew.  She could be anything weak and shallow when out of his hands; she had recently proved it still, in view of the interview, and on the tide of his labours to come to that wished end, he struck his breast to brave himself with a good hopeful spirit.  ’Once mine!’ he said.

Moreover, to the better account, Clotilde’s English friend had sent him the lines addressed to her, in which the writer dwelt on her love of him with a whimper of the voice of love.  That was previous to her perjury by little, by a day-eighteen hours.  How lurid a satire was flung on events by the proximity of the dates!  But the closeness of the time between this love-crooning and the denying of him pointed to a tyrannous intervention.  One could detect it.  Full surely the poor craven was being tyrannized and tutored to deny him! though she was a puss of the fields too, as the mounted sportsman was not unwilling to think.

Before visiting his Mentor, Alvan applied for an audience of General von Rudiger, who granted it at once to a man coming so well armed to claim the privilege.  Tresten walked part of the way to the General’s house with him, and then turned aside to visit the baroness.