"Now you might help me out of all this trouble. Papa says that Uncle Malte never looks at money when he happens to have any, and anybody that would hit the lucky moment might get as much from him as they pleased. You, lucky fellow, are now with him all the time, and you might watch your chance, for the sake of an old friend, and slip in a good word for me. Or better, tell him that you have some old debts that you are worried about, and wouldn't he lend you fifty or a hundred _thalers_, and then do you send it to me, for you can't want it, you know. You'll never come back here, whatever happens, for you cannot imagine the way people here talk about you. Lederer prays an extra five minutes every day for the strayed lamb--that's what he calls you, you old sinner. Justizrath Heckepfennig said that if ever it was written in a mortal's face that he would die in his shoes, it is in yours. In Emilie's coterie it was resolved to tear out of all their albums the leaves on which you had immortalized yourself; and at my uncle's, day before yesterday, there was a regular scene about you. Uncle said at the table that you must take powerfully long strides if you meant to outrun the ---- and here he made a sign, you understand, at which Hermine began to cry terribly, and Fräulein Duff said it was a shame to talk that way before a child. So you see you have a pair of firm friends among the females. You always did have, and have still, the most unaccountable luck in that quarter. Don't break my pretty cousin's heart, you lucky dog! "P. S.--Papa once told me that Constance gets a small sum of money every year from an old Spanish aunt of hers. She certainly has no use for it. Maybe you could coax something from her--at all events, you might look into the matter a little."