rn Fraeuleins are devilish sensitive, and for that reason I now
refrain from speaking to her. But why don't you go over and introduce
yourself to the ladies, my dear baron--you who have blue blood as well
as they?"

Just at this moment Schnetz, in all his lankness, stepped up to their
table and greeted the ladies with formal politeness, at the same time
shaking hands with his friends. The fact that he should meet Felix here
did not seem to strike him as strange.

"You happy mortals!" he growled out, biting his cigar, and pulling his
hat down lower over his forehead, while he withdrew a little distance
from the rest with Felix and Elfinger. "You all get on so capitally
together, and it does one good to hear you laugh so heartily; while we
are keeping up the usual sort of conventional twaddle, which consists,
upon my soul, in each one's saying nothing which the others could not
have said as well. They have just been wondering, behind my back, that
I should have anything whatever to do with you people, whom they look
upon as _mauvais genre_. A few artists and two pretty girls, at whose
papa's Madame the Countess buys her gloves--_quelle horreur!_ But the
ladies are not so bad; even the young countess, with the fixed dimples
in her highly-colored cheeks--by Heaven! little Fanny over there looks
ten times as much like a countess--even she is a good child, _au fond_,
and the right sort of a husband might still make something of her. But
as for that cousin of hers, to whom she is as good as engaged, and the
other young nobleman, with the imperial and the heavy manner--between
ourselves, he is dead in love with my little princess, who scarcely
honors him with a look--_tonnerre de Dieu!_ what nice specimens they
are of our high-born youth! And to think of my being condemned to go
about among them without treading on their toes! Thus are the sins of
the fathers visited upon the children! The first Schnetz who, whether
as marshal or hostler, helped an Agilolfinger into the saddle, has it
on his conscience that I, the unworthiest of his descendants, still
belong with the rest of them, hard as I try to make myself disagreeable
and even unbearable."

They agreed to meet again in the evening at Rossel's villa, and then
returned to their respective parties. But our friends soon grew
impatient of quietly sitting at table over their coffee. The
neighboring wood invited the lovers where they could be free from
chaperonage, and Aunt Bab