He did not get on well with Soltyk. Louis Soltyk was a young Russian, half Polish, who occasionally sat amongst the Germans at the Berne. Volker saw more of him than anybody. It was he who had superseded Kreisler in the position of influence as regards Volker’s purse. Soltyk did not borrow a hundred marks. His system was far more up to date. Ernst had experienced an unpleasant shock in coming into contact with Kreisler’s clumsy and slovenly, small-scale money habits again! Soltyk physically bore, distantly and with polish, a resemblance to Kreisler. His handsome face and elegance were very different. Kreisler and he disliked each other for obscure physiological reasons: they had perhaps scrapped in the dressing-rooms of creation for some particular fleshly covering, and each secured only fragments of a coveted garment. In some ways, then, Soltyk was his efficient and more accomplished counterpart, although as empty and unsatisfactory as himself. “Aber wo ist der deutsche Student?” Soltyk would ask, referring to him usually like that. “He’s in good company somewhere!” Volker revealed Kreisler as a lady’s man. This satisfied Soltyk’s antipathy. The Russian kept an eye on Volker’s pocket while Kreisler was about. He had not only recognized in him a mysterious and vexing kinship, with his instinct; his sharper’s sense, also, noted the signs of the professional borrower, the most contemptible and slatternly member of the crook family. In an access of sentiment Ernst asked his new friend to try and sell a painting of Kreisler’s. Soltyk dealt in paintings and art objects. But Soltyk took him by the lapel of the coat and in a few words steadied him into cold sense. “Non! Sois pas bête! Here,” he pulled out a handful of money and chose a dollar-piece. “Here—give him this. You buy a _picture_—if it’s a picture you want to buy—of Krashunine’s. Kreisler has nothing but _Kreisler_ to offer. C’est peu!” * * * * * Ernst introduced Kreisler next to another sort of Paris compatriot. It was a large female contingent this time. He took him round to Fräulein Lipmann’s on her evening, when these ladies played the piano and met. Kreisler felt that he was a victim of strategy. He puffed and swore outside, complained of their music, the coffee, their way of dressing. The Lipmann circle could have stood as a model for Tarr’s Bourgeois-Bohemians, stood for a group. For chief characteristic this particular Bourgeois-Bohemian set had the inseparability of its members. Should a man, joining them, wish to flirt with one particularly, he must flirt with all—flatter all, take all to the theatre, carry the umbrellas and paint-boxes of all. Eventually, should he come to that, it is doubtful if a proposition of marriage could be made otherwise than before the assembled band! And marriage alone could wrench the woman chosen away from the clinging bunch.