When, ten minutes later, shivering comfortably, he entered the breakfast-room, he found beside his cup a little heap of letters which the morning post had brought. There were two letters that gripped his attention. One read: "Berlin N., Philippstrasse 10 a. DEAR HERR VON NIEBELDINGK:-- For the past week I have been in Berlin studying agriculture, since, as you know, I am to take charge of the estate. Papa made me promise faithfully to look you up immediately after my arrival. It is merely due to the respect I owe you that I haven't kept my promise. As I know that you won't tell Papa I might as well confess to you that I've scarcely been sober the whole week.--Oh, Berlin is a deuce of a place! If you don't object I will drop in at noon to-morrow and convey Papa's greetings to you. Papa is again afflicted with the gout. With warm regards, Your very faithful FRITZ VON EHRENBERG." The other letter was from ... her--clear, serene, full of such literary reminiscences as always dwelt in her busy little head. "DEAR FRIEND:-- I wouldn't ask you: Why do I not see you?--you have not called for five days--I would wait quietly till your steps led you hither without persuasion or compulsion; but 'every animal loves itself' as the old gossip Cicero says, and I feel a desire to chat with you. I have never believed, to be sure, that we would remain indispensable to each other. '_Racine passera comme le cafe_,' Mme. de Sevigne says somewhere, but I would never have dreamed that we would see so little of each other before the inevitable end of all things. You know the proverb: even old iron hates to rust, and I'm only twenty-five. Come once again, dear Master, if you care to. I have an excellent cigarette for you--Blum Pasha. I smoke a little myself now and then, but _c'est plus fort que moi_ and ends in head-ache. Joko has at last learned to say 'Richard.' He trills the _r_ cunningly. He knows that he has little need to be jealous. Good-bye! ALICE." He laughed and brought forth her picture which stood, framed and glazed, upon his desk. A delicate, slender figure--"_blonde comme les bles_"--with bluish grey, eager eyes and a mocking expression of the lips--it was she herself, she who had made the last years of his life truly livable and whose fate he administered rather than ruled. She was the wife of a wealthy mine-owner whose estates abutted on his and with whom an old friendship, founded on common sports, connected him.