The firm of Almbach and Co. belonged to that class whose names on the Exchange, as well as in the commercial world generally, were of some position, without being of conspicuous importance. The relations between its head and Consul Erlau were not only of a business nature; they dated from earlier times, when both, equally young and meanless, were apprenticed in the same office, the one to raise himself until he became a rich merchant, whose ships sailed on every ocean and whose connections extended to every quarter of the globe--the other to found a modest business, which never reached beyond certain bounds. Almbach avoided all more daring speculations, all greater undertakings, which he was by no means the man to superintend or guide; he preferred a moderate, but steady gain, which also fell to his share to the fullest extent. His social position was certainly as different from that of Consul Erlau as was his old-fashioned gloomy house in Canal Street, with its high gables and barred office windows, from the princely furnished palace at the Harbour. The friendship between the former youthful companions had gradually diminished, but it was certainly Almbach who was principally to blame for it. He could not be reconciled to the Consul after the latter had become a millionaire, living in the style suited to that position. Perhaps he could not forgive him for occupying the first place, while he himself only stood in the third or fourth rank, and well as he knew how to utilise the advantages which the intimate acquaintance with the great firm of Erlau opened to him, yet he held, all the more, to his strictly middle-class, and somewhat old-frankish household, and kept aloof from all communication with that of the Consul. The latter's invitations had ceased when he saw that they were never accepted; for years the mutual meetings had been restricted to those occasional ones on Exchange or some chance place, and lately Almbach had even, when any business matters required a personal interview, let his son-in-law represent him. It was decidedly disagreeable to him, that on this occasion the young man had received the invitation to the opera and the succeeding evening party, and impossible as it was to refuse this civility, the merchant did not attempt to disguise from his family his dissatisfaction at Reinhold's introduction into the "nabob's life," the designation with which he usually honoured his old friend's household.