One word more: after nine weeks the Doctor's revenge by means of the plant-book produced in him, as the least revenge does in every good man, a painful reaction. "The Herbarium," said he, "annoys me, as often as I stick anything into it; but it is certainly true, a man shall have passed through all capital cities and retain his modesty: at the very gate of his native town the devil of pride enters into him and accompanies him on his first visits--his good fellow citizens, he will have it, must during his absence have become rational."
That sympathy which grafts, by approach, grown up people in the first quarter of an hour, often draws children also to each other. Our couple flew into each other's arms and hugged each other over forty times a day. You good children! Be glad that you can venture to express your love still more strongly than by letters. For culture restricts the bodily domain of love's expression within narrower and narrower limits--this haggard Duenna took away from us first the whole body of the one we love--then the hand, which we are no longer allowed to press--then the buttons and the shoulders, which we are no more permitted to touch--and of a whole woman she has given us nothing to kiss, except (as a kind of hair) the glove--we all now manipulate each other at a distance. Amandus with his more feminine heart hung upon Gustavus's more manly one with all the love which the weaker gives the stronger, more richly than it wins back from it love in return. Hence woman loves man more purely; she loves in him the present object of her heart, he in her, oftentimes, the image of his fancy; hence comes his fickleness and vacillation. This little preface must be taken only as an introduction to a little passage of arms between our little Castor and Pollux.