“He plundered me; he took my last cent, and then acted as if it were my damned duty to go through fire for his baronical excellency,” screamed Herr Carovius. “Before I came to know him I was a well-to-do man; I could enjoy myself; I could reap the higher pleasures of human existence. To-day I am ruined. My money is wasted, my house is burdened with mortgages, my peace of mind has gone plumb to the Devil. Two hundred and seventy-six thousand marks is what the young man owes me and my business friends. Yes—two hundred and seventy-six thousand marks, including interest and interest on the interest, all neatly noted down and signed up by the duly authorised parties. Am I to let him slam the door in my face because of his indebtedness to me? I think you will see yourself that that cannot be expected of me. He at least owes me a little respect for what I have done for him.” The Baroness had listened to all this with folded hands and unfixed eyes. But the close of the story was too much for her: she threw herself on a great divan, overcome—for the time being—with worry and maternal weakness. A grin strayed across Herr Carovius’s face. He twirled his Calabrian headpiece in his hands, and let his leery eyes wander about the walls. Then it was that he caught sight of Dorothea, whom he had thus far failed to see in his intoxication of wrath and rapture. When Herr Carovius entered, Dorothea, out of discretion rather than with serious intent, had made herself as small as possible in the most remote corner of the room. Trembling with curious excitement, she had wished to evade the eye of her uncle Carovius, for in very truth she was ashamed of him. She regarded him as a sort of comic freak, who, though he had enough to live on, could not be said to be in the best of circumstances. When he rolled the sum the Auffenberg family owed him from his tongue, she was filled with astonishment and delight, and from then on she took a totally different view of him. During the last few years Herr Carovius had seen very little of Dorothea. Whenever he had met her, she had passed by him in great haste. He knew that she was taking violin lessons: he had often heard her screechy fiddling on the stairs and out in the hall. He fixed his eyes on her, and exclaimed: “Well I’m a son-of-a-gun if there isn’t Döderlein’s daughter! How did you get here? Aha, you are going about and showing the people what you can do! I should think you and your creator would have had enough of music by this time.” The Baroness, recalling that the young girl was present, raised her eyes and looked at Dorothea reproachfully. For the first time in her life she felt that the resources she had managed to extract from a life of neglect were about exhausted; for the first time in her life she felt a shudder at the thought of her musical stupefactions.