One of the young cuirassier officers who occupied the back seat of the carriage pulled himself slowly erect, and, in all his fair-haired splendour, climbed out, pushing aside with a brusque movement the restaurant-manager, who had officiously thought it necessary to tender his services. The other youth, equally gigantic and fair-haired, and perhaps a trifle more phlegmatic, followed. They threw open on either side the carriage doors, and, with an action of the arm that seemed borrowed from a Court quadrille, assisted the stupendous female form sitting on the front seat of the carriage to alight. With swelling bosom and wide-spreading hips, her fat hands imprisoned in new light kid gloves, her grey gauze veil thrown back, displaying a snub nose, the lady calmly descended, with a glance over her shoulder of somewhat sharp disapproval at the old gentleman who followed her. "Leave me alone, boys," he snapped, when his sons would have helped him too. "Your broken-down old father is still able to help himself." He threw off his dust-coat on the seat behind him, and with an elastic bound sprang down without touching the carriage steps. He stood there, a dapper figure in his short, elegantly cut coat, his little eyes twinkling with self-satisfaction out of a face lined from fast living, the cheeks of which hung down on either side of an aggressively curled-up grey moustache. He had to look up to his wife and sons, who were all more than a head taller than himself. The party entered the small waiting-room reserved for first-class passengers, which, besides two bare polished tables, and portraits in lithograph, veiled in green gauze, of the county nobility and gentry, boasted nothing but apparatuses for the annihilation of flies; which consisted of a glass bottle full of soapy water, two plates containing poisoned paper, and a few glasses covered with brandy-soaked bread bored with holes. Within and around these traps revolved hundreds of half-drowned and poisoned flies in their last death-struggle. The host of the restaurant offered his refreshments to the "Herr Baron"--Königsberg beer or tea, also an incomparably fine brew of lemonade, were to be had. Herr von Stolt ordered beer, and sent his sons out to look after their luggage. They closed the door behind them as they took their leave, and disappeared in the direction of the buffet, where they were soon heard chaffing the barmaid. "Thank God that they are going away," said the lady, with a sigh, loosening her violet hat-strings, from which a broad double chin billowed forth awe-inspiringly. "It is high time." Her spouse suppressed a smile, and then asked, "Why?" "Have you seen anything of either of them between meal-times during the last fortnight?" she answered with another question. "Now, now, it is not so bad as all that," repeated he; "but, as you say, they were certainly out a good deal." "And where did they go? That is the point."