There was something distinctly annihilating in this air of superiority. It had its full effect on Herr Carovius: his unleashed laughter was immediately converted into a gurgling titter. He opened his eyes wide and rolled them behind his nose-glasses, thus making himself look like a water-spitting figure on a civic fountain. Marguerite, however, timid as she was, never saying a word without making herself smaller by hiding her hands, glanced in helpless fashion from her brother to her husband, and dropped her head before them. Was the feeling of Herr Carovius for Andreas Döderlein one of hatred? It was hatred and more. It was a feeling of venomous embitterment with which he thought of him, his name, his wife, his child, the thick, bulky wedding ring on his finger, and the gelatinous mass of flesh on his neck. From that evening on he never again visited his sister. If Marguerite got up enough courage to visit him, he treated her with crabbed contempt. She finally came to the point where she would pass his door with not a thought of entering it. When the first child was born and the maid brought him the glad tidings, he squinted into the corner, tittered, and made bold to say: “Well, my congratulations. It is good that the Döderleins are not to become extinct, for so long as one of them is living, _plaisir_ will not have vanished from the earth.” Little Dorothea formed in time the habit of playing on the steps or around the old windlass well in the backyard. Herr Carovius procured forthwith a mean dog and named him Cæsar. Cæsar was tied to a chain, to be sure, but his snarls, his growls, his vicious teeth were hardly calculated to inspire the child with a love for the place near him. She soon stopped playing at home. Four years had elapsed since the Carovius-Döderlein wedding. Herr Carovius was celebrating his birthday. Marguerite called with Dorothea. The child recited a poem which she had learned by heart for her uncle’s benefit. Carovius shook with laughter when he saw the girl dressed up like a doll and realised that the recital was imminent. Dorothea had of course the enunciation of one of her age. When through, Herr Carovius said: “Honestly, it would never have occurred to me that such a little toad could croak so beautifully.” Though the man knew so little about women that it would be perilous to attempt to measure his ignorance of them, he nevertheless felt, as he looked into Marguerite’s radiant face, a certain disappointment in life—a disappointment which he would try at once to benumb but which delighted him. IV About this time Herr Becker died. He was the senior city official, and had been living in the second story of the apartment for twenty-eight years. Dr. Benda moved in at once with his mother.