Professor Jager's appearance was never specially inviting, but on this evening there was something peculiarly unpleasant about the man's pale face. His stereotyped smile, and the drooping corners of the mouth, contrasted with his effort to give an air of solemnity to his forehead, and to look as melancholy as possible through his spectacles, so that he appeared on the whole not unlike a black tom cat who glides purring and with raised back around a person's leg, preparing to scratch his hands the next moment furiously. Thus he drew near to the two noblemen, made a very low bow, and said: "I beg ten thousand pardons if I am disturbing the _entente cordiale_ of two bosom friends, but----" "Come here, professor," said Barnewitz, who welcomed the interruption; "join us in a glass of Pichon. Waiter! another----" "Pray, don't; many thanks. Regret infinitely that I should have interrupted you in your cozy talk; but I heard at your house, Baron Cloten, that I should find you here, and a matter of importance which I had to communicate----" "Don't mind me, gentlemen," said Barnewitz. "I'll go into the reading-room till you have done." "Pray, pray; I have only two words----" "Well, all right. Call me when you have done!" With these words Barnewitz went into the adjoining room, where he rested his elbows on the table and his head on his hands, and then plunged into the mysteries of the Grunwald official journal. He had no sooner left them than Professor Jager turned to Cloten and said, whispering mysteriously: "Baron Cloten, I have to tell you something that will frighten you." Cloten turned pale and stepped back. His first thought was that his stables had been burnt, and Arabella and Macdonald, his two thoroughbreds, had perished in the flames. The professor did not leave him long in this terrible uncertainty; but with a low, spectral voice, and drawing the corners of his mouth so low down that they seemed to meet under the chin, he said: "Your wife----" "Ha!" cried Cloten. "What is it? What has happened?" "I don't know," replied Jager, "but I fear for the worst. Look at this paper [he searched his pockets and produced a folded-up piece of paper]. I found it just now on my wife's writing-table. But before I read to you what is on the paper you must swear you will never tell from whom you have heard it." "I'll swear anything you want," said Cloten, with nervous excitement. "What is the matter with the paper?" "Directly, directly! First, let me tell you that for some weeks now your wife and mine have become great friends, an intimacy which from the beginning has puzzled me sorely. Their meetings, I was told, had a purely poetical purpose--you know my wife is president of the Lyric Club--but I was struck by the fact that a third person appeared there always, or at least very frequently, a person against whom I have ever felt an unconquerable aversion. This person is----" "Doctor Stein! I know! Go on," said Cloten, breathlessly.