The Conte suddenly arose, gathered up the map, crushed it together, and dashing it on the floor, stamped on it. "I could carry it out, and it is my favourite scheme," he cried, "but what of that, I give it up, Alfred Stein can do as he chooses. I throw away millions for your sake! For your sake, Count Oswald!" His agitation was terrible and extreme, as he held out both hands to the young man. Oswald angrily retreated a step. Had the man escaped from a lunatic asylum? Just then the door opened. "Well, Ossi?" Pistasch called.--"Ah!"--perceiving the Conte--"beg pardon for intruding." "Not at all," said Oswald decisively, without looking at Capriani, "we have finished." The Conte bowed and withdrew. But he turned in the doorway and said, "Might I beg you, Herr Count, to carry my remembrances to your honoured mother. For although she does not know Conte Capriani--she will surely be able to recall Doctor Alfred Stein." Whereupon he disappeared. Oswald went to a marble table whereon stood a caraffe of water, and as he took it up he met his own glance in the mirror hanging above the table. A shudder crept icily over him. He poured out a glass of water, and drank it at a draught. "What is the matter?" asked Pistasch. "Nothing," Oswald replied slowly, and almost dreamily. "Talking with that--that scoundrel has agitated me. I feel as if I had just got rid of some loathsome reptile." CHAPTER V. "Is smoking allowed, I should like to know?" Three times Pistasch made this impertinent little remark as he gazed about him in 'The Temple of National Art.' It was a temporary temple, neither unsuitable, nor wanting in taste, but built in the rapid, superficial manner of a circus, constructed over night as it were, and it was now filled to overflowing with Bohemian lovers of music. The four gentlemen were sitting in a proscenium box; Truyn and Georges in front, Pistasch and Oswald behind them. The opera was Faust, the _mise en scene_ was rather primitive, and the tenor had a cold; but the principal part was sung by an Italian prima donna who had not only a magnificent voice, but also a pair of uncommonly fine eyes. It was during the third _entr'acte_ after the cantatrice had been enthusiastically applauded that Pistasch allowed himself the foregoing impertinent observation. "Do you want to be turned out?" asked Georges. "I spoke quite innocently, and seriously," said Pistasch. Immediately afterwards he recognised in the next box a young man as a certain Doctor of Law, with whom he had been associated a few years before on the committee of a charity ball. He extended his hand to him round the front of the box, asked respectfully after the health of a deaf aunt, and after a talented sister, and even made inquiries about a cross cat, a pet of the doctor's, all in faultless idiomatic Bohemian, thus establishing his reputation as a thoroughly genial and national nobleman.