"Ho, ho!" growled Florian. "What a vain woman your wife is, Pani Nathan! We are all at her feet, but that is not enough for her. She wants young Herr Julko to be the next victim. Ho, ho, ho! All her trouble will be thrown away upon him, however, for he is already in love. God's punishment is in store for her!" Chane waited patiently until the old toper had finished speaking: she was accustomed to his rude witticisms. "We are not all as light-hearted as you are," she answered, "and this man really seems too sensible to be capable of falling in love." Herr Florian put his hands on his sides and laughed and sniggered. "Ho, ho!" he gasped. "Did you ever hear such nonsense?... Ho, ho, ho!... As if only stupid people could fall in love!... Am I stupid? and--Pani Nathan, are you not jealous?--I am in love with her. To punish you, I must assure you that he is already disposed of!... his heart is buried in a grave. Ho, ho, ho!" "Fool!" muttered Chane impatiently, while Herr Florian staggered into the _casino_ with Nathan. She could not get what he had told her out of her head, and in the evening, when she sat arranging business letters with her husband, who was to leave home next day, she suddenly asked-- "What did Bolwinski mean by saying that Herr von Negrusz's heart was buried in a grave?" "I do not know," replied Nathan; "but the story goes that he was in love with a girl who died, and that he will never marry. It may be true, for Christians are fools when they are in love." "Ah!" said Chane, staring thoughtfully at the flame of the lamp. She soon took her pen again, and finished a letter to Moses Rosenzweig, ordering a barrel of herrings and five hundredweights of sugar from Czernowitz. * * * * * Next day a strange thing happened. Herr Florian Bolwinski is not only a fat man, he is also a good-natured man. As he has never injured any one, he is not afraid of any one--except his landlady, although he has never injured her. He is good-natured, but he has one great fault--he tells everything that he knows, and even invents a little now and then. These additions are the fruit, partly of a vivid imagination, and partly of his numerous potations. Next morning, when he sat alone in the _casino_ with the district judge, he related how Frau Chane had opened her heart to him, and had confessed, with torrents of tears, her mad love for Herr von Negrusz, and that she felt inclined to kill herself in despair, because the object of her passionate love did not take any notice of her, and would not waste one word upon her, even if she were dying. Herr Florian did not make his story as short as I have given it above, but he went into every little particular, giving the most graphic descriptions of the whole scene.