The day of the party arrived. His sisters had put on their white muslin dresses and fastened dark roses in their hair. They skipped up and down before the looking glass and asked each other, “Am I beautiful?’ And though each willingly replied” Yes,’ to this question, they hardly knew how beautiful they were. His mother sat in a corner, looked at them and smiled. Paul ran hither and thither in confusion. He inwardly wondered how such a joyful event could cause one such great anxiety. He had prepared all sorts of beautiful speeches which he intended to hold at the party about the welfare of humanity, about peat-culture, and Heine’s “Buch der Lieder”. They should see that he was able to converse amiably with ladies. The open carriage, a remainder of past splendor, took the brother and sisters to the party. They were to return on foot. As they approached, Paul saw behind the fence bright colored dresses flitting through the shrubs and heard the giggling of merry girls’ voices. His uncomfortable feeling was considerably augmented by this. In the veranda Mr Douglas received them with a merry laugh. He pinched the sisters’ cheeks, slapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Well, young knight, to day we are going to win our spurs.” Paul turned his cap in his hand and broke into a silly laugh, at which he felt angry with himself. “Now _allons_ to the ladies!” cried Mr Douglas, taking the sisters one on each arm, while he himself had to trot behind them. The giggling came nearer and nearer. Gay men’s voices were intermingled with it--he felt as if he were going to be beheaded. And then a sort of veil came over his eyes, indistinctly he saw the crowd of strange faces, which seemed to stare at him from the clouds. His speeches about the turf-culture came to his mind, but there was nothing to be done with them at this moment. Then he saw Elsbeth’s face rise in the mist. She wore a brooch of blue stones and smiled at him kindly. In spite of this smile she never had appeared so strange to him as at that moment. “Mr Paul Meyerhofer, the companion of my childhood,’ she said, taking his hand, and leading him round. He bowed to all sides, and had a vague feeling that he was making himself ridiculous. “Eh, there is my pattern boy,” the cousin’s merry voice called out, and all the ladies giggled. Then he was asked to sit down and was offered a cup of coffee. “Mamma has gone to lie down a little,” Elsbeth whispered to him, “she is not quite well to day.” “Isn’t she?” he said, and smiled in a silly manner Cousin Leo had gathered a circle of young ladies round himself, and told them a story about a young lawyer who had been so fond of sweets that, seeing a bag _pralines_ which he was not allowed to have, he had been crystallized into a sugar loaf. They almost died with laughter over this. “Oh, if only I could tell such stories,” thought Paul to himself and, as nothing better occurred to him, he ate one piece of cake after the other.