The burgomaster's fine spacious house looked out upon the market square, and the upper rooms, usually unoccupied, had been placed at the disposal of the guests. The Frau Burgomeisterin did all that she could to make the stay beneath her roof of her dead sister's husband agreeable to him, and her efforts in this direction were all the more praiseworthy since she was always upon a war-footing with him. She was perpetually vacillating between respect for his reputation, very flattering to her vanity in so near a relative, and detestation for the 'godless' scientific doctrines to which he owed his fame, and it was a great trial to her that her nephew, whom, in the absence of any children of her own, she loved like a son, should have been compelled by his father's command to pursue the path of science. It was early in the morning, and the Professor was standing at the window of his room looking out upon the quiet market square. Wehlau had changed but little in the last ten years. He had the same intellectual face, with its sarcastic expression and piercing eyes; the hair, however, had grown gray. Beside him stood the Frau Burgomeisterin, an imposing figure, of whom the evil-disposed in Tannberg affirmed that she ruled the ruler, and was the autocrat of her household. "And our boys are here at last!" said the Professor, in apparently high good humour. "You'll have noise and confusion enough now, for Hans will turn the house upside down. You know him of old. They both look very well: Michael, especially, has a very manly air." "Hans is much the handsomer and more attractive," the lady rejoined, very decidedly. "Michael has neither of these qualities." "Granted, in the eyes of you ladies, that is! On the other hand, he has an earnestness and solidity of character by which our harum-scarum Hans might well take example. It is no small distinction for so young an officer to be ordered for service on the general's staff. He surprised me yesterday with this piece of information, while Hans will have some difficulty in getting his diploma." "That's not the poor boy's fault," his sister-in-law declared. "He has never had more than a half-hearted interest in the profession that has been forced upon him. It cost my poor sister many a secret tear to have you insist so inexorably upon his burying his talent." "And you whole rivers of them," the Professor added, with a sneer. "You all made my life wretched combining with the boy against me, until I issued my mandate, which he was forced to obey." "With despair in his heart. In destroying his hope of an artistic career you deprived him of his ideal,--of all the poesy of his young life." "Don't mention Poesy, I entreat," Wehlau interrupted her. "I am on the worst of terms with that lady for all the mischief she does and the heads she turns. I set my son straight, I rejoice to say, in time. I have not noticed any despair about him. Moreover, he has not a particle of talent for it."