"What!" cried the battle-painter, "you are going to leave me to go alone to the enchanted garden of this Armida, while all the time I have been counting on you to save me in case of necessity! Jansen is sure to come late in any case, even if he decides to go at all. No, my dear fellow, you know I expend such unheard-of courage on canvas, that not much remains to me for the _salon_. So, back to back, shoulder to shoulder, with a friend and companion-in-arms, or I will crawl into the first violon-cello-case I come to, and bring disgrace upon the Paradise Club." He forced Felix, who half laughed and half protested, to make his toilet, and then dragged him out with him, holding tightly to his arm even after they were in the street, as though he still feared that he might try to give him the slip. At heart Felix was glad to be forced. He was secretly ashamed of his fear to enter, even on a day when she was absent, the house where his old sweetheart was living; but now all the depression which had weighed upon him ever since he found out she was in the city left him in the company of his merry friend, and the latter's account of his latest adventures as rejected suitor and happy lover put him in the most cheerful humor. He rallied the artist upon his flighty heart, which, instead of dreading the fire like a burned child, wanted to singe itself in this new flame; all of which Rosenbusch received with a quiet sigh. "The fact is," he said, "a countess like this is not so very dangerous. It goes without saying, that in all intercourse with her one must respect certain limits when one is a poor fool of a painter who has to let himself be snubbed even by a glove-maker. But if, on the other hand, a female demon like this should really take it into her head to elope with one of my sort to Italy or Siberia, let us say--well, she will know what she is about; and in the mean time we can let things go as Heaven wills." Amid talk of this sort they had reached the hotel, in the first story of which a row of lighted windows had already shown them where the female autocrat of all the arts was holding her court. Felix pulled his hat down lower over his forehead, and sprang up the stairs so rapidly that Rosenbusch was left behind breathless. "You are an extraordinary fellow!" he cried, laughing, after he had overtaken him at the top. "It takes a good deal of diplomacy to get you started, but once started, you can't get there soon enough." Felix made no reply, for just then a servant opened a side-door and they entered a spacious _salon_, which resounded with the last notes of one of Chopin's nocturnes, with which the hostess herself had opened the _soirée_.