e it from him at
once."

But I continued smoking: the smoke burned and bit the skin of my tongue;
still I held the stem between my teeth, until the tobacco was burned
out.

That was my first and last pipe.

"At any rate, drink a glass of water," Lorand said.

"No thank you."

"Well, go home, for it will soon be dark."

"I am not afraid in the streets."

Yet I felt like one who is a little tipsy.

"Have you any appetite?" inquired Pepi scornfully.

"Just enough to eat a gingerbread-hussar like you."

Lorand laughed uncontrollably at this remark of mine.

"Gingerbread-hussar! you have got it from him, Pepi."

I was quite flushed with pride at being able to make Lorand laugh.

But Pepi, on the contrary, became quite serious.

"Ho, ho, old fellow," (when he spoke seriously to me he always addressed
me "old fellow," and on other occasions as "my child"). "Never be afraid
of me; now Lorand might have reason to be: we both want what is ready;
we do not court your little girl, but her mother. If the old wigged
councillor is not jealous of us, don't you be so."

I expected Lorand to smite that fair mouth for this despicable calumny.

Instead of which he merely said, half muttering:

"Don't; before the child..."

Pepi did not allow himself to be called to order.

"It is true, my dear Desi: and I can tell you that you will have a far
more grateful part to play around Melanie, if she marries someone else."

Then indeed I went home. This cynicism was something quite new to my
mind. Not only my stomach, but my whole soul turned sick. How could I
measure the bitterness of the idea that Lorand was paying court to a
married woman? Such a thing was not to be seen in the circle in which we
had been brought up. Such a case had been mentioned in our town,
perhaps, as the scandal of the century, but only in whispers that the
innocent might not hear: neither the man nor the woman could have shown
their faces in our street. Surely no one would have spoken another word
to them.

And Lorand had been so confused when Pepi uttered this foul thing to his
face before me. He did not deny it, nor was he angry.

I arrived at home in an agony of shame. The street-door was already
closed: so I had to pass in by the shop door. I wished to open it
softly that the bell should not betray my coming, but Father Fromm was
waiting for me. He was extremely angry: he stopped my way.

"Discipulus negligens! Do you know 'quote hora?' Dec