e, and from which nothing
in the world can divorce them. In outward social intercourse, on the
other hand, they will gladly and easily allow themselves to take their
tone from the person with whom at the moment they are occupied; and thus
by a mixture of impassiveness and susceptibility, by persisting and by
yielding, they continue to keep the government to themselves, and no man
in the cultivated world can ever take it from them.

The Architect, following at the same time his own fancy and his own
inclination, had been exerting himself and putting out his talents for
their gratification and for the purposes of his friends; and business
and amusement, while he was with them, had been conducted in this
spirit, and directed to the ends which most suited his taste. But now in
a short time, through the presence of the Assistant, quite another sort
of life was commenced. His great gift was to talk well, and to treat in
his conversation of men and human relations, particularly in reference
to the cultivation of young people. Thus arose a very perceptible
contrast to the life which had been going on hitherto, all the more as
the Assistant could not entirely approve of their having interested
themselves in such subjects so exclusively.

Of the impersonated picture which received him on his arrival, he never
said a single word. On the other hand, when they took him to see the
church and the chapel with their new decorations, expecting to please
him as much as they were pleased themselves, he did not hesitate to
express a very contrary opinion about it.

"This mixing up of the holy with the sensuous," he said, "is anything
but pleasing to my taste; I cannot like men to set apart certain special
places, consecrate them, and deck them out, that by so doing they may
nourish in themselves a temper of piety. No ornaments, not even the very
simplest, should disturb in us that sense of the Divine Being which
accompanies us wherever we are, and can consecrate every spot into a
temple. What pleases me is to see a home-service of God held in the
saloon where people come together to eat, where they have their
parties, and amuse themselves with games and dances. The highest, the
most excellent in men, has no form; and one should be cautious how one
gives it any form except noble action."

Charlotte, who was already generally acquainted with his mode of
thinking, and, in the short time he had been at the castle, had already
probed it more