At a sign from the Baroness the old servant gave Herr Carovius a free path. He went in: his face was red; he made a quite ridiculous bow. His eyes drank in the velvet portières, the cut glass mirrors, the crystal vases, and the bronze statuettes. In the meantime, and without fail, he had placed his right hand against his hip, giving the fine effect of right akimbo, and set one foot very elegantly a trifle more to the fore than the other: he looked like a provincial dancing-master. He complained of the presumptuousness of the servants, and assured the Baroness that she was in complete enjoyment of his deference. He spoke of his good intentions and the pressure of circumstances. When the impatient bearing of his sole but distinguished auditor at last obliged him to come to the real purpose of his visit, the Baroness twitched; for from his flood of words there emerged, as she heard them, nothing but the name of her son. With panting sounds she came up to Herr Carovius, and took him by the coat-sleeve. Her dim, black eyes became as round as little bullets; the supplicating expression in them was so much balm to the soul of her visitor. Herr Carovius was enchanted; he was having the time of a scurvy life; he became impudent; he wanted to take vengeance on the mother against the son. He saw that the Baroness did not correspond to the picture he had made of a creature who belonged to the aristocracy. In his imagination she had lived as a domineering, imperious, inaccessible phenomenon: and now there stood before him an old, obese, worried woman. On this account he gave his voice a shriller tone, his face a more scurrilous expression than was his wont. Then he launched forth on a graphic narration of the unhappy plight in which he now found himself as a result of his association with Baron von Eberhard, Jr. He claimed that it was nothing but his own good nature that had got him into this trouble. And yet, what was he to do? The Baron would have starved to death, or become morally depraved, if he had not come to his spiritual and pecuniary rescue, for the young man was sadly wanting in the powers of moral resistance. And what had he gained by all this altruism? Ingratitude, bitter ingratitude!