dity, and flattered him too with her
blush. She could dare to say to Kollin what her scarlet sensibility
forbade her touching on with him: not that she would not have had an airy
latitude with him to touch on what she pleased: he liked her for her
boldness and the cold peeping of the senses displayed in it: he liked
also the distinction she made.

The cry to supper conduced to a further insight of her adaptation to his
requirements in a wife. They marched to the table together, and sat
together, and drank a noble Rhine wine together--true Rauenthal. His
robustness of body and soul inspired the wish that his well-born wife
might be, in her dainty fashion, yet honestly and without mincing, his
possible boonfellow: he and she, glass in hand, thanking the bountiful
heavens, blessing mankind in chorus. It belonged to his hearty dream of
the wife he would choose, were she to be had. The position of interpreter
of heaven's benevolence to mankind through his own enjoyment of the
gifts, was one that he sagaciously demanded for himself, sharing it with
the Philistine unknowingly; and to have a wife no less wise than he on
this throne of existence was a rosy exaltation. Clotilde kindled to the
hint of his festival mood of Solomon at the banquet. She was not devoid
of a discernment of flavours; she had heard grave judges at her father's
board profoundly deliver their verdicts upon this and that vineyard and
vintage; and it is a note of patriotism in her country to be enthusiastic
for wine of the Rhine: she was, moreover, thirsty from much talking and
excitement. She drank her glass relishingly, declaring the wine princely.
Alvan smacked his hands in a rapture: 'You are not for the extract of
raisin our people have taken to copy from French Sauternes, to suit a
female predilection for sugar?'

'No, no, the grape for me!' said she: 'the Rhine grape with the elf in
it, and the silver harp and the stained legend!'

'Glorious!'

He toasted the grape. 'Wine of the grape is the young bride--the young
sun-bride! divine, and never too sweet, never cloying like the withered
sun-dried, with its one drop of concentrated sugar, that becomes ten of
gout. No raisin-juice for us! None of their too-long-on-the-stem
clusters! We are for the blood of the grape in her youth, her
heaven-kissing ardour. I have a cellar charged with the bravest of the
Rhine. We--will we not assail it, bleed it in the gallant days to come?
we two!' The picture of his