Bosswinkel began to think over the affair at once, but, spite of his boundless avarice and his utter absence of conscience or character, he could not endure the idea of Albertine's marrying that disgusting Benjamin, and in a sudden attack of rectitude he determined that he would keep his word to Tussmann. CHAPTER IV. TREATS OF PORTRAITS, A GREEN FACE, JUMPING MICE, AND ISRAELITISH CURSES. Albertine, soon after she made Edmund's acquaintance, came to the conclusion that the big oil portrait of her father which hung in her room was a horribly bad likeness of him, and dreadfully scratched into the bargain. She pointed out to her father that though it was so many years since the portrait was painted, he was really looking much younger, and better in every way, than the painter had represented him. Also, she particularly disliked the gloomy, sulky expression of the face, the old-fashioned clothes, and a preposterous bunch of flowers which he was holding between his fingers in a delicate manner, displaying in so doing certain handsome diamond rings. She talked so much, and so long, on this subject, that at last her father himself saw that the portrait was horrible, and couldn't understand how the painter had managed to turn out such a caricature of his well-looking person. And the more he thought the matter over and looked at the picture, the more he was convinced that it was an execrable daub. He determined to take it down, and stow it away in the lumber room. Albertine said that was the best thing that could be done, but that, all the same, she was accustomed to see dear papa's picture in her room, that the bare space on the wall would be such a blank to her that she should never feel comfortable; so that the only course was for dear papa to have _another_ portrait painted, by some painter who knew what he was about, and that _she_ could think of nobody but Edmund Lehsen, so celebrated for his admirable portraits. "My dear," the Commissionsrath said, "you don't know what you're talking about. Those young painters are so full of conceit, they don't know where to turn themselves, don't care how much they ask for those bits of scumblings of theirs, won't think of anything under gold Fredericks." But Albertine declared that Edmund Lehsen painted for the love of the thing much more than for money, and would be sure to charge very little. And she kept on at her father so assiduously, that at last he agreed to go to Edmund Lehsen, and see what he would say about a portrait.