"You happy mortals!" he growled out, biting his cigar, and pulling his hat down lower over his forehead, while he withdrew a little distance from the rest with Felix and Elfinger. "You all get on so capitally together, and it does one good to hear you laugh so heartily; while we are keeping up the usual sort of conventional twaddle, which consists, upon my soul, in each one's saying nothing which the others could not have said as well. They have just been wondering, behind my back, that I should have anything whatever to do with you people, whom they look upon as _mauvais genre_. A few artists and two pretty girls, at whose papa's Madame the Countess buys her gloves--_quelle horreur!_ But the ladies are not so bad; even the young countess, with the fixed dimples in her highly-colored cheeks--by Heaven! little Fanny over there looks ten times as much like a countess--even she is a good child, _au fond_, and the right sort of a husband might still make something of her. But as for that cousin of hers, to whom she is as good as engaged, and the other young nobleman, with the imperial and the heavy manner--between ourselves, he is dead in love with my little princess, who scarcely honors him with a look--_tonnerre de Dieu!_ what nice specimens they are of our high-born youth! And to think of my being condemned to go about among them without treading on their toes! Thus are the sins of the fathers visited upon the children! The first Schnetz who, whether as marshal or hostler, helped an Agilolfinger into the saddle, has it on his conscience that I, the unworthiest of his descendants, still belong with the rest of them, hard as I try to make myself disagreeable and even unbearable." They agreed to meet again in the evening at Rossel's villa, and then returned to their respective parties. But our friends soon grew impatient of quietly sitting at table over their coffee. The neighboring wood invited the lovers where they could be free from chaperonage, and Aunt Babette was paying too close attention to an exposition of art by the "interesting young man," as she called Kohle, to take any heed of the fact that Rosebud and Nanny occasionally disappeared from view entirely, while Fanny anxiously insisted upon not getting out of sight of the others.