In great excitement Joachim announced to his patron that he had seen the Jewess, whom he already regarded as his property, in his father’s flat. “That’s rot,” said Niels Heinrich coldly. He had before this jeered venomously at the cures old Heinzen performed. He repeated that jeer now, and added that if the Jewess had gone to the old man’s, there was no doubt but that she had done so because she had taken a liking to Joachim. The fellow grinned. In the drinking den where they spent many of their nights, Niels Heinrich had craftily arranged that the prospective affair of Joachim and the Jewess should be frequently discussed and commented. Joachim did not know that he and his affair were a joke. He took Niels Heinrich aside, and asked how he could get at the girl most quickly. Niels Heinrich looked at him mockingly, and told him he had better put off all attempts for a while yet; this was a matter in which one had to proceed cleverly; the Jewess was distrustful, and was furthermore one of those new-fangled student wenches. You couldn’t go at her with a club; you had to be elegant and considerate. But the simpleton was not to be persuaded. He said he wanted to go to her and invite her to a ball on the following Sunday. Niels Heinrich laughed uproariously. “I guess you’re crazy,” he said. “Your head must’ve gone addled.” He paled and laughed anew, and said: “You got to wait and see. I’ll lay ten to one the girl will turn up at your old man’s pretty soon. I’ll have some one watching, and you stay home so you don’t miss her.” He slapped Joachim’s shoulder. He stood there like a pole--lean, dry, pointed. In the embankment on the road to Weissensee the wheels of an express train thundered on the rails. X Ruth and Christian entered a dim, stuffy room. The door to the little hall was open, as well as the door to the adjoining room. There were a good many people in the flat. Careless of all these strangers, Mother Heinzen sat at her table and pared potatoes. The table was covered with innumerable things--files, boxes, ink-bottles, even a pair of shoes. In the background, at a second table which was as narrow as a carpenter’s bench, Joachim and an apprentice were making metal stoppers with a hand machine. Old Heinzen leaned in a wicker chair. A shabby black cloth hid the lower part of his body and concealed its mutilation. His lean and almost rigid face, with its thick, inflamed lids, its yellowish beard, and its sharp, straight nose, expressed no inner participation in what went on around him.