But poor Ernestine looked anything but happy or bright either, and the Baron, though a lover, was middle-aged; hence his raptures did not spoil his appetite, and he made genuine German breakfast, demolishing steaks, potatoes, rolls, eggs, and coffee, in the most unromantic way in the world. His hair was turning iron-grey, and on his pericranium was a bald spot the size of a Prussian dollar. He limped a little in his gait--there was no concealing that devilish gout--yet he looked surprisingly young. He was attired in an elegant morning-coat with pale-coloured trousers, a scarlet flower as well as a red ribbon at his button-hole. His hair was brushed up into a stiff bristly pyramid in front; but his face looked flabby now, and his coarse moustache, like that of a walrus, overhung his mouth. Though suspicious, as we have said elsewhere, concerning that visit to the Dom Kirche, and the mistake about the colour of the marble of Charlemagne's throne, he had not the slightest idea that he had a rival so formidable as Charlie Pierrepont, or that he, Herr Baron Grünthal, Oberdirector of the Consistory Court, could have any rival at all! Yet there was one thing he could not help remarking--that of all the many handsome presents he had sent Ernestine, from Berlin and elsewhere, not one was ever to be seen on her slender wrists, her fairy-like hand, or round her delicate throat. This surely boded ill for him as a lover! He found himself, however, highly acceptable to her family, and the marriage once over, all that was necessary would be sure to come after. Whenever he was present or expected, the Countess always seemed, somehow, unusually large and rustling, and on this morning was especially so, in white lace over back moiré, with her high _toupée_--it was quite an evening costume she had donned. The meal was taken somewhat silently, for at times: 'When great events were on the gale, And each hour brought a varying tale;' and when newspaper correspondents were often fallacious and fallible, the gazettes were unfolded with fear and trembling, and the arrival of a telegram was quite sufficient to terrify the quiet household at Frankenburg. The Count and Baron, with spectacles on nose, had skimmed over the papers, which contained nothing to alarm them in the way of friends' names among the lists of killed and wounded in the action of the 14th of August; but the Baron read aloud, with peculiar unction, some of those barbarous reports and stories with which the French and German papers then teemed of cruelties perpetrated on both sides. No one knew then whether they were false or true; but they served to fan and inflame the hatred of the adverse parties to fever heat.