The carriages had rolled away. The reception-rooms were once more empty; only the baron and the baroness remained, for the two Clotens had taken Helen in their carriage; the interrupted dialogue might have been resumed. But it was not done. The old gentleman felt too tired, and Anna Maria began to look in an entirely new light upon the question whether Helen should remain at the boarding-school or not? For about ten minutes ago the thought had suddenly entered her mind that it might, after all, be wiser to be reconciled to her daughter, who had at least as much prospect as any other young lady, and probably more, to become Princess of Waldenberg Malikowsky, Countess of Letbus. CHAPTER III. A man who is to be married in a few weeks finds it usually very hard, even in ordinary cases, to do equal justice to his professional duties and to his duties as a betrothed. But in the case of Franz this dilemma, insuperable to many persons, was perhaps the easiest part of his task, although he had an abundance of business as one of the representatives of the privy councillor in his medical practice (another part had been assumed by one of his colleagues). But more difficult by far than these duties were the troubles arising from his effort to arrange the extremely complicated money matters of his future father-in-law. It appeared gradually that the debts of the privy councillor would not be so overwhelming, if it should be feasible to collect the sums which were due him on all sides. But this was in most cases highly improbable. The debtors of the privy councillor generally lived in garrets and cellars; they were the lame and the crippled, the infirm and the invalid, often widows and orphans, as often also unworthy people, who had wretchedly abused the well-known liberality of the privy councillor. What enormous and, alas! what useless efforts this man had made to fill the Danaids' tub of the poor! with what zeal he had made himself poor in order to overcome the poverty around him, like the fabled pelican, who feeds his young with his own blood. What embarrassments he had wilfully assumed, in order to relieve others from the same troubles! How often he had given up his own sleep that his neighbor might sleep! How he had borrowed money at usurious interest in order to pay the debts of others. How he had entered into the most hazardous speculations, of which he knew nothing, but which must succeed and return a hundred per cent, if you believed the originators, but which of course never did succeed, and overwhelmed the good-natured and credulous privy councillor with new indebtedness--only to help others on in their own business!