Meanwhile Lothar had awakened from his prolonged morning slumbers, and endeavoured in vain to recall how he had got home and to bed on the previous evening. It cost him a considerable amount of resolution to get up, and when he did so he felt wretched and depressed. Gradually certain vague memories of last night occurred to his mind. He put his hand into one of his coat-pockets, then into the other; both were empty. He shook his head, and finally recollected that he had worn another coat yesterday. It was hanging over an arm-chair. He proceeded to search the pockets, and produced a crumpled roll of paper. He opened it, and sank upon a lounge with an exclamation of despair. The paper contained an acknowledgment for the round sum of ten thousand marks, which he had lost in the course of the night at play, and which he had pledged his honour should be paid within a week. Lothar stared at the characters on the crumpled sheet. Ten thousand marks! Payable within a week! Here was an overwhelming disaster! How had it happened? He racked his brain to remember; the events of the evening were mere formless shadows in his dulled remembrance. He had first won, then lost, and there had been a good deal of champagne drunk; all that was perfectly simple and commonplace. But this debt! How was it to be paid? If Bernhard had been at home, he would have gone to him again in spite of everything that he had said to him. He had always been wont to rectify in this manner the unjust family traditions that endowed one son with everything in the way of the goods of this world and left the others destitute. But Bernhard was away, and must either be sought out in Berlin or informed by letter of this last terrible debt. And what if Bernhard refused this time, as he had so often threatened to do, to pay the debts? Lothar buried his face in his hands, and the moisture stood in beads upon his forehead. There was but a week before him in which to adopt any plan of payment; he must decide immediately, and, in common with all men lacking independence, he was incapable of decision without consultation with some friend. It is true that he now remembered that Werner had warned him and that he had rejected his advice; he knew, too, that of late there had been a certain diminution of the cordial friendship that had existed between them. But nevertheless it was to Werner that his thoughts turned in this dire extremity. "He is the best of fellows, and has proved that he is really my friend," he thought. "I could not, of course, accept a loan from him again, aside from the fact that this sum is far beyond his means; but I will, at all events, ask his advice. One's own perceptions become clearer when one has talked matters over with a sensible man."