About the same hour--perhaps a little earlier two gentlemen displayed at the billiard-table, in the restaurant near the main guard-house on the square, that industry which is so becoming to busy idlers. The two gentlemen who met at this favorite lounging place of the _jeunesse dorée_ of Grunwald, were Cloten and Barnewitz. The former, who excelled in all the arts which required a sure eye and a steady hand, and no head work, had beaten his adversary in every game, and hence the young man was in excellent humor, while the other was nearly angry. "Another game, Barnewitz?" asked Cloten, triumphantly, after having finished the twelfth with a brilliant carom. "Thank you; no!" said Barnewitz, throwing his cue on the billiard-table; "am not in the right humor for it to-day. I cannot play well anyhow in this miserable twilight!" "We can have the lamps lit." "No, thank you! Another day! We can play quits to-morrow." Cloten now laid down his cue also, stepped before the looking-glass and twisted his blonde moustache, while Barnewitz threw himself upon the sofa and yawned. "It is wretchedly tedious here," he said; "don't know how on earth to kill the whole afternoon!" "Let us take a walk." "It is too abominably cold." "A game at piquet?" "Too tiresome." "A bottle of claret?" "Well, that's better." "Waiter! a bottle of Pichon and a light." The waiter brought what was ordered. Cloten threw himself into an arm-chair opposite to Barnewitz, and stretched out his legs. "Well?" "Well!" "Don't you know anything?" "No! Do you?" "No!" After this exchange of bright thoughts there followed, as a matter of course, a pause of exhaustion, and the ship of conversation remained for a quarter of an hour stranded on a sandbank, while the two men smoked their cigars and sipped their wine. Cloten and Barnewitz had been apparently excellent friends ever since their terrible collision in summer, but in reality they had watched each other with unbroken distrust. It is true, the distrust was but too well founded in this case. Hortense Bamewitz had no sooner come to Grunwald than she cast out her net--experienced fisher of men as she was--after her old lover, and Cloten had at that time already discovered that happiness in the arms of his former lady-love was far more attractive than the honor of being the husband of the most fashionable lady in town. Barnewitz, on the other hand, gave the noble couple ample opportunity for meeting; for he threw himself, at Grunwald, head foremost into a vortex of amusements, of which there was no lack there for a rich nobleman who cared more for quantity than for quality. Nevertheless, he was as much the victim of jealousy now as before, and he was therefore highly pleased to see, what all others saw as well, that Emily treated her husband like a school-boy, and had evidently found a worthier object for her loving heart.