"I was beginning to be a little anxious," said Zinka, "Ossi laughed at me, and said I was like his mother, who if he is half an hour late in returning home from a ride always imagines that he has been thrown and killed on the road, and that the only reason the groom does not make his appearance, is because he has not the courage to tell the sad tidings." Oswald laughed. "Yes, my mother's fancy runs riot in such images, sometimes," he admitted, stretching out his hand for the reins, that he might help Zinka to turn round. "And how is poor Fritz?" "Wretched--such misery is enough to break one's heart--and no getting rid of it." "And you are no longer angry with him?" Oswald asked with a touch of good-humoured triumph. "Heaven forbid! but--," Truyn rubbed his forehead--"Oh, that stock-jobber--that phylloxera!" Just then there appeared in the road an aged man, spare of habit and somewhat bent, but walking briskly; his features were sharp but not unpleasant, his arms were long, and his old-fashioned coat fluttered about his legs. "Good-day, Herr Stern," Oswald called out to him in response to his bow. Truyn doffed his hat and bowed low on his horse's neck. "Who is it whom you hold worthy of so profound a bow, papa?" Gabrielle asked. "Rabbi von Selz," Truyn made answer, "in times like these such people should be treated with special respect, if only for the sake of the lower classes who always regulate their conduct somewhat by ours." "Oho, uncle, your bow was a political demonstration, then," Oswald remarked. "To a certain degree," Truyn replied, "but Stern is, moreover, a very distinguished man." "He is indeed," Oswald affirmed, "he is a particular friend of mine--if any one among the people about here maltreats him, he always applies to me. Poor devil! The Jews are a very strange folk. I always divide them into two families, one related directly to Christ, the other to Judas Iscariot. Poesy, the Seer, has produced two immortal types of these families, Nathan and Shylock." "Aha, Ella, I hope you are duly impressed by your lover, he really talks like a book," Truyn rallied his daughter who, her fair head slightly bent backward, was looking over her shoulder at Oswald, with rapt admiration in her large eyes. "I invited Fritz to dine with you, comrade, the day after to-morrow. He is almost as madly enthusiastic about your betrothed as you are yourself, and you can sing your Laudamus together." CHAPTER V. "There is nothing to be done with the fellow.--I never encountered such weakness of mind," exclaimed Capriani to his wife. The hour was three, and just before dinner; in accordance with Austrian custom, or rather with the national bad habit, they dined at Schneeburg at half-past three, although the whole family, especially those of the second generation, accustomed to late foreign hours, found this earlier hour very inconvenient.