eyes of the young ladies, so that the most beautiful, the best,
and the most nobly born amongst them might fall to his share as wife.
One morning, as he was sitting at his drawing table sketching the
ground-plan of a new building, a certain elderly Baroness--distantly
related to his father--was announced as having come to call. When
Hyppolitus heard her name he remembered that his father had always
spoken of her with the greatest indignation--nay, with absolute
abhorrence, and had often warned people who were going to approach her
to keep aloof, without explaining what the danger connected with her
was. If he was questioned more closely, he said there were certain
matters as to which it was better to keep silence. Thus much was
certain, that there were rumours current in the Residenz of some most
remarkable and unprecedented criminal trial in which the Baroness had
been involved, which had led to her separation from her husband, driven
her from her home--which was at some considerable distance--and for the
suppression of the consequences of which she was indebted to the
prince's forbearance. Hyppolitus felt a very painful and disagreeable
impression at the coming of a person whom his father had so detested,
although the reasons for this detestation were not known to him. But
the laws of hospitality, more binding in the country than in town,
obliged him to receive this visit.

Never had any one, without being at all ill-favoured in the usual
acceptation of that term, made by her exterior such a disagreeable
impression upon the Count as did this Baroness. When she came in she
looked him through and through with a glance of fire, and then she cast
her eyes down and apologized for her coming in terms which were almost
over humble. She expressed her sorrow that his father, influenced by
prejudices against her with which her enemies had impregnated his mind,
had formed a mortal hatred to her, and though she was almost starving,
in the depths of her poverty he had never given her the smallest help
or support. As she had now, unexpectedly as she said, come into
possession of a small sum of money she had found it possible to leave
the Residenz and go to a small country town a short distance off.
However, as she was engaged in this journey she had not found it
possible to resist the desire to see the son of the man whom,
notwithstanding his irreconcilable hatred, she had never ceased to
regard with feelings of the highest estee