A message arrived that her father, the old Marquis (Barty's grandfather), was at the point of death. He was ninety-six. He had expressed a wish to see her once more, although he had long been childish. So Barty saw her off, with her maid, by the _Baron Osy_. She promised to be back as soon as all was over. Even this short parting was a pain--they had grown so indispensable to each other. Tescheles was away from Antwerp, and the disconsolate Barty went back to Malines and dined by himself; and little Frau waited on him with extra care. It turned out that her mother had cooked for him a special dish of consolation--sausage-meat stewed inside a red cabbage, with apples and cloves, till it all gets mixed up. It is a dish not to be beaten when you are young and Flemish and hungry and happy and well (even then you mustn't take more than one helping). When you are not all this it is good to wash it down with half a bottle of the best Burgundy--and this Barty did (from Vougeot-Conti and Co.). Then he went out and wandered about in the dark and lost himself in a dreamy dædalus of little streets and bridges and canals and ditches. A huge comet (Encke's, I believe) was flaring all over the sky. He suddenly came across the lighted window of a small estaminet, and went in. It was a little beer-shop of the humblest kind--and just started. At a little deal table, brand-new, a middle-aged burgher of prosperous appearance was sitting next to the barmaid, who had deserted her post at the bar--and to whom he seemed somewhat attentive; for their chairs were close together, and their arms round each other's waists, and they drank out of the same glass. There was no one else in the room, and Barty was about to make himself scarce, but they pressed him to come in; so he sat at another little new deal table on a little new straw-bottomed chair, and she brought him a glass of beer. She was a very handsome girl, with a tall, graceful figure and Spanish eyes. He lit a cigar, and she went back to her beau quite simply--and they all three fell into conversation about an operetta by Victor Massé, which had been performed in Malines the previous night, called _Les Noces de Jeannette_. The barmaid and her monsieur were trying to remember the beautiful air Jeannette sings as she mends her angry husband's breeches: "Cours, mon aiguille, dans la laine! Ne te casse pas dans ma main; Avec de bons baisers demain Jean nous paîra de notre peine!"