To-day he had conceived the happy idea of going gaily to Consul Engel, and asking him for some money for the organ, and he received a cheque on the spot. So "_Konstantinople_" had "_erobet warden_" again, and champagne corks flew! Who liked might drink with him. He came up, beaming with happiness and swinging his arms about. Every one laughed, and he laughed with them. He arrived just after the Town Bailiff and his wife. They looked as stiff as though the organist had yoked them and was driving them into the church. Great commotion was now caused by an attempt to drive a carriage through the crowd. Up to this time every one had come on foot. There was no room for carriages here, they cried, and turned sullen; the police had to interfere. In the carriage sat a pretty lively lady of uncertain age, by the side of a somewhat stout gentleman with a remarkably shaped head and a supercilious expression. Facing the lady sat an older man with a red face, heavy moustache and imperial, and wearing a number of orders; he talked incessantly, as though they were all three in a closed room where no one could see them. They did not belong to the town; no one knew them until the carriage-door was opened, and the man with the orders led the lady forward. Then the hotelkeeper's wife said that he was a Consul-General from Christiania; the lady was not his wife, but that of the gentleman who was walking beside them--Consul Garman, of the firm of Garman and Worse. Soon after these arrived two other strangers, Consuls Bernick and Riis. The first-named invariably attended funerals with a stick in his hand; the other always wore his order of St. Olaf when he went to a ball. Several important magnates followed; some with their wives, some without--millionaires in the herring, timber, or ice trade. The monotony of the black coats was broken by the full uniform of the Sheriff--he was without his wife, and in company with a gouty old General, a relation of Fürst. Besides these, there were Government officials and merchants mingled together, most of them with their wives, who hung on their husbands' arms like well-filled costly baskets; the husbands were quite eclipsed. Absolute silence gradually spread upwards from the lower end of the market-place, like oil over troubled waters. The bridegroom was alighting from his carriage, accompanied by his brother-in-law, Consul Wingaard. From another carriage descended two naval officers and two civilians, one of whom was Anton Dösen; these four joined the others.