Graff
the tailor is adding another five hundred thousand francs, and Mlle.
Emilie's father not only allows me to incorporate her portion--two
hundred and fifty thousand francs--with the capital, but he himself will
be a shareholder with as much again. So the firm of Brunner, Schwab and
Company will start with two millions five hundred thousand francs. Fritz
has just bought fifteen hundred thousand francs' worth of shares in
the Bank of France to guarantee our account with them. That is not all
Fritz's fortune. He has his father's house property, supposed to be
worth another million, and he has let the Grand Hotel de Hollande
already to a cousin of the Graffs."

"You look sad ven you look at your friend," remarked Schmucke, who had
listened with great interest. "Kann you pe chealous of him?"

"I am jealous for Fritz's happiness," said Wilhelm. "Does that face look
as if it belonged to a happy man? I am afraid of Paris; I should like
to see him do as I am doing. The old tempter may awake again. Of our two
heads, his carries the less ballast. His dress, and the opera-glass and
the rest of it make me anxious. He keeps looking at the lorettes in
the house. Oh! if you only knew how hard it is to marry Fritz. He has a
horror of 'going a-courting,' as you say; you would have to give him a
drop into a family, just as in England they give a man a drop into the
next world."

During the uproar that usually marks the end of a first night, the flute
delivered his invitation to the conductor. Pons accepted gleefully; and,
for the first time in three months, Schmucke saw a smile on his friend's
face. They went back to the Rue de Normandie in perfect silence; that
sudden flash of joy had thrown a light on the extent of the
disease which was consuming Pons. Oh, that a man so truly noble, so
disinterested, so great in feeling, should have such a weakness!... This
was the thought that struck the stoic Schmucke dumb with amazement. He
grew woefully sad, for he began to see that there was no help for it; he
must even renounce the pleasure of seeing "his goot Bons" opposite him
at the dinner-table, for the sake of Pons' welfare; and he did not
know whether he could give him up; the mere thought of it drove him
distracted.

Meantime, Pons' proud silence and withdrawal to the Mons Aventinus
of the Rue de Normandie had, as might be expected, impressed the
Presidente, not that she troubled herself much about her parasite, now
that she was fr