"Fourteen aces, three kings, three queens.... And you don't make a trick." And he laid his hand on the table and then pushed all the cards together while his companion shuffled. "Did you know that Ella is about to be married?" "What a pity!" "Why a pity?" "She can't jump through the hoop any more." "Nonsense. The more they are married the slenderer they grow." "Yet there are exceptions. Many names belonging to the aristocracy of the circus already appear in the third and fourth generation, which seems to point to some alternation of a slender and a stouter form, or if you like, to the new moon, the first quarter, &c." "You are mistaken. _Error in calculo_. You forget that there may be adoptions. All these circus people are secretly 'Gichtelianer' and pass on their property, their rank and their names according to agreement. They seem the same and yet they are different. There is always fresh blood. Cut.... Besides that I have another bit of news. Afzelius is to join the General Staff." "Which do you mean?" "The one who belongs to the Uhlans." "Impossible." "Moltke values him highly and he must have done some excellent work." "He does not impress me. It was all an affair of hunting libraries and plagiarizing. Any one who is a trifle ingenious can turn out books like Humboldt or Ranke." "Four of a kind. Fourteen aces." "Five sequence to king." And while the trick was being played, one could hear from the billiard room near by the sound of the balls and the falling of the little pins. In the two back rooms of the club, the narrow side of which looked out on a sunny but tiresome garden, there were in all only six or eight men, all silent, all more or less absorbed in their whist or dominoes, and not the least absorbed were the two men who had just been talking about Ella and Afzelius. The game ran high, and so the two did not look up until they saw, through an open curved niche, a new-comer approaching from the next room. It was Wedell. "But Wedell, if you don't bring us a lot of news, we will excommunicate you." "Pardon, Serge, there was no definite agreement." "But almost. For the rest, you will find me personally in the most accommodating mood. How you can settle things with Pitt, who has just lost 150 points, is your affair."