idyl Panna Irene has much in her, very much of the cry of
life, of that beautiful impulse toward--what Ruysbrook called
love in action, toward ecstatic impressions, and with such a
disposition, as far as my skill extends in this matter, it is
difficult to halt at the mere spectacle of sparrows making love
outside one's window--"

"A truce to malicious phrases, Emil," interrupted Maryan. "Thou
art not threatened with the fate of Werther because my sister has
broken with thee--"

"Of course not!" laughed the baron.

And Maryan added quickly:

"And thou shouldst even offer up to her that painted pot, called
gratitude, because she has not closed to thee the road to some
daughter of a multi-millionnaire Yankee. America possesses men of
'iron toil,' whose daughters are far richer than the
daughters--alas! than the only daughter of my father."

"Perhaps! perhaps!" agreed the baron; "the daughters of the
richest American fathers pay very high prices for European
titles. In this way, or another, or both together, I may make a
colossal fortune. Yes, wealth is a door before which the heralds
of life have their station--I am not a man pasted over with
labels. I confess that this perspective entices me; what I
possess now is merely a little crumb for my hunger of life. I
shall leave here greedy for new sensations and new profits--eager
for love in action and for gain."

After a moment's silence Kranitski whispered:

"They are going!"

"They are going: Then glancing along the faces of the two young
men, he added:

"You are going!"

"Yes," said the baron, "and therefore we make a certain
proposition. Perhaps you would take upon yourself to be one of
our agents."

He presented in detail a plan of the enterprise--to carry out
this there would be agents disposed through the whole country to
discover and purchase.

"We need aesthetic persons, a company of developed men, and it is
difficult, very difficult to find them. In this country sterility
reigns throughout the whole region of gray matter in the
brain--it is sterility in the great gray substance--if you
wish--"

Kranitski was silent. It was not long since he had desired this
position, perhaps, and something which might attach him to people
and to life. But now--during this discourse with his two
friends--an increasing disgust had seized hold of him. The
sarcasm of the baron about shirtless parents who kissed him with
lips suffering from hunger before harvest pi