book, he heard, and took in, everything that was being said around him, and would often strike in with some most apposite observation, or laugh at anything witty in a high tenor laugh, without looking up from his book. Commissionsrath Bosswinkel had been at school with Tussmann at the Grey Friars, and from that period dated the intimate friendship which there had always been between them. Tussmann saw Albertine grow up from childhood; and, on her twelfth birthday, after presenting her with a bouquet, the finest that money could procure from the first florist in Berlin, kissed her hand for the first time with an amount of courtesy and ceremonious deference which no one would have supposed him to be capable of. Dating from that day there dawned in the breast of the Commissionsrath an idea that it would be a very good thing if his old schoolfellow were to marry Albertine. He wanted to get Albertine married, and he thought this would be about the least troublesome way of getting it done. Tussmann would be content with very little in the shape of portion, and Bosswinkel hated bother of every kind, disliked making new acquaintances, and, in his capacity of a Commissionsrath, thought a great deal more of money than he ought to have done. On Albertine's eighteenth birthday he propounded this scheme (which he had previously kept to himself) to Tussmann. The Clerk of the Privy Chancery was at first alarmed at the suggestion. The idea of entering the matrimonial estate, particularly with so youthful a lady, was more than he could quite see his way to. But he got accustomed to it by degrees, and one day, when Albertine, at her father's instigation, gave him a little purse, worked by her own hands in the prettiest of colours (addressing him by his much-prized "title" as she did so), his heart blazed up in a sudden flame of affection. He told the Commissionsrath at once that he had made up his mind to marry Albertine, and as Bosswinkel immediately embraced him in the character of his son-in-law, he, very naturally, considered himself engaged to her. There was still one little point in the matter of some importance, namely, that the young lady herself had not heard a syllable about the affair, and could not possibly have the very faintest inkling what was going forward. At an excessively early hour of the morning, after the strange adventures which we have, in our first chapter, described as having been met with by Tussmann at the foot of the Townhouse Tower, and in the wineshop in Alexander Street, the said Clerk of the Privy Chancery came bursting, pale and wild, with distorted features, into his friend Bosswinkel's bedroom. The Commissionsrath was much alarmed and exercised in his mind, for Tussmann had never come in upon him at such an hour, and his manner and appearance clearly indicated that something most remarkable had been happening.