Hence he will have no following.  But let me die to-morrow, the party I have created survives.  In him you see the dam, in me the stream.  Judge, then, which of them gains the future!—­admitting that, in the present he may beat me.  He is a Prussian, stoutly defined from a German, and yet again a German stoutly defined from our borderers:  and that completes him.  He has as little the idea of humanity as the sword of our Hermann, the cannon-ball of our Frederick.  Observe him.  What an eye he has!  I watched it as we were talking:  and he has, I repeat, imagination; he can project his mind in front of him as far as his reasoning on the possible allows:  and that eye of his flashes; and not only flashes, you see it hurling a bolt; it gives me the picture of a Balearic slinger about to whizz the stone for that eye looks far, and is hard, and is dead certain of its mark-within his practical compass, as I have said.  I see farther, and I fancy I proved to him that I am not a dreamer.  In my opinion, when we cross our swords I stand a fair chance of not being worsted.  We shall:  you shrink?  Figuratively, my darling have no fear!  Combative as we may be, both of us, we are now grave seniors, we have serious business:  a party looks to him, my party looks to me.  Never need you fear that I shall be at sword or pistol with any one.  I will challenge my man, whoever he as that needs a lesson, to touch buttons on a waistcoat with the button on the foil, or drill fiver and eights in cards at twenty paces:  but I will not fight him though he offend me, for I am stronger than my temper, and as I do not want to take his nip of life, and judge it to be of less value than mine, the imperilling of either is an absurdity.’

‘Oh! because I know you are incapable of craven fear,’ cried Clotilde, answering aloud the question within herself of why she so much admired, why she so fondly loved him.  To feel his courage backing his high good sense was to repose in security, and her knowledge that an astute self-control was behind his courage assured her he was invincible.  It seemed to her, therefore, as they walked side by side, and she saw their triumphant pair of figures in her fancy, natural that she should instantly take the step to prepare her for becoming his Republican Princess.  She walked an equal with the great of the earth, by virtue of her being the mate of the greatest of the great; she trod on some, and she thrilled gratefully to the man who sustained her and shielded her on that eminence.  Elect of the people he! and by a vaster power than kings can summon through the trumpet!  She could surely pass through the trial with her parents that she might step to the place beside him!  She pressed his arm to be physically a sharer of his glory.  Was it love?  It was as lofty a stretch as her nature could strain to.

She named the city on the shores of the great Swiss lake where her parents were residing; she bade him follow her thither, and name the hotel where he was to be found, the hour when he was to arrive.  ’Am I not precise as an office clerk?’ she said, with a pleasant taste of the reality her preciseness pictured.