No formal proposal had been made. I was only told that the count was attracted by me; and that, through his mother, he had begged permission to become more nearly acquainted with me. It must, however, in his estimation, have been of far greater importance that I should know him than that he should know me, for his whole conversation was about himself, his mode of life, his habits, and tastes. He seemed especially to like to dilate upon his love of order, and the punctuality he exacted from his _entourage_. He graphically described to us his old historic castle, the arrangements of the apartments, the decorations of its halls and corridors. We heard less of the country where his estates were situated; of the people living about, not one word. “And what about the neighborhood?” my sister asked one day. And Bernhard, my brother, home on leave, exclaimed: “Bruno Schwarzburg must have lived somewhere in your vicinity before his troubles.” Thus, on April 13, 1882, for the first time I heard the name afterward to be so dear to me. They began talking and laughing about him as a half-mad man, Bernhard constantly putting in, good-naturedly, “After all, he is a fine fellow!” “Yes, with a bee in his bonnet,” returned the count. “He will never make his fortune, as I have often told him, even at the time he was doing the craziest thing of all and entering an action against himself.” “How could he do that?” I asked. “How can anyone enter an action against himself?” “Ah, how can one!” replied the count; “I don’t understand it, nor would any other man with a grain of common sense in his composition. His father, who left a heap of debts behind him, had had the foresight just before his death to hand over to his son, by deed of gift, the indisputable possession of a small capital. The father dead, the creditors seized upon everything--a set of miserable money-lenders, for the most part, who had been paid over and over again during the old baron’s lifetime. But one widow woman with five children----” “Excuse me,” interrupted Bernhard, “one daughter, a blind girl.” The count, who does not like to have his statements questioned, here said impatiently: “My dear fellow, what does it matter? So this widow came off badly,” he resumed, turning to me. “‘Nothing is left,’ she was told when she presented her claim. ‘What do you mean--there is my money,’ says Bruno. ‘The creditors have no claim upon that,’ explains the lawyer, who was also Schwarzburg’s trustee. His father, I must explain, had taken the precaution to appoint a trustee, as Master Bruno had already shown signs of emulating his progenitor in the matter of squandering. So now he insists upon paying the widow’s claim; the trustee objects, and the upshot of it was a trial, in which Schwarzburg appeared as plaintiff against himself, and which he won by losing the little property he had.” The laughter was general, and more things were told about the man whom they all seemed to look upon as an original.