He had not reappeared for some time at Grenwitz House. Felix had sent him, before leaving, four hundred dollars in advance for the month of November, taking it from his travelling money, and requesting him at the same time to address himself hereafter, "in all business matters," directly to his aunt, the baroness. Albert had as yet not availed himself of this permission, as it was difficult even for him to spend four hundred dollars a month in the modest town of Grunwald; and he had, besides, been specially successful at faro of late. Nevertheless, he proposed to pay his visit very soon, and to avail himself of the opportunity for a better examination of the whole situation. It happened in these same days that Albert received one evening, just as he was going out, a letter by the town mail, which put him into such bad humor that he gave up his original intention to attend an extraordinary meeting of "the Rats" in the city cellar, and instead, paid a visit to his landlord--the sexton, Toby Goodheart--the man who had filled all the little crooked streets and lanes around St. Bridget's with the odor of his sanctity. Mr. Toby Goodheart was a bachelor, because he was too ugly to obtain a wife, as he said himself: because his heaven-aspiring mind did not condescend to such worldly thoughts, as his admirers insisted upon believing. But neither the one nor the other could be the true reason, for Mr. Toby was not ugly, but a very good-looking man of some forty years, whose high forehead, bald at the temples, gave him a most god-fearing expression. Nor was Mr. Toby really so very god-fearing, unless his piety consisted in the solemn manner with which he stepped, Sunday after Sunday and year after year, dressed in his shiny-black dress-coat, black trousers, and a long flowing black gown fastened to the collar, through the church, pushing his velvet bag by means of a long pole under the noses of the "devout listeners." That Mr. Toby was in reality a son of Belial was known to but very few men in Grunwald, where the excellent man had now been living for twenty years--perhaps only to one single man, and that was the occupant of the two best rooms in the sexton's official dwelling: Mr. Albert Timm, surveyor. Mr. Toby had dropped his mask in an evil hour, when the spirit of his much-beloved grog was stronger in him than the spirit of lies, and shown his true face to Mr. Timm, the "famous fellow." Mr. Toby Goodheart and Mr. Albert Timm had since that hour formed the closest intimacy, a friendship which was cemented and secured in its firmness and duration by a remarkable community of fondness for women, wine, and dice, and the common possession of delicate secrets. Albert Timm entered the little room behind the parlor, where his landlord used to sit, with his hat on his head, and found the excellent man engaged in the pleasant occupation of preparing a glass of his favorite beverage.