she was not making fun of you; but you were certain to
carry away on each occasion a supply of gossip which would last for
weeks.

Externally, Gropphusen and his wife were exceedingly well matched. He
was of medium height, with slender limbs and a pale, finely chiselled
face, vivacious eyes, wavy dark hair, and a small black beard. She was
one of those dainty blondes who remind one of iced champagne, with a
marvellously graceful figure, a droll little nose, and steel blue eyes
under dark eyebrows.

When first married they were madly in love with each other; but when
the fire burnt out, Gropphusen went back to his old habits.

Truth to tell, he was a rake, who, even after marriage, thought nothing
of spending dissipated nights week after week in the capital, returning
by the early morning train. He seemed to have cast-iron nerves; for
even the envious had to admit that his official work did not suffer. He
had a clever head, and was an artist into the bargain, an excellent
painter of horses; experts advised him to hang up his sword on a nail
and devote himself to the brush. But he had not yet made up his mind to
that.

Irregular in all other departments of life, he was regular only in his
excesses. He was very rich, so that he could give the rein to almost
all his whims. Indeed, reports of a rather fantastic kind, somewhat
recalling Duke Charles of Brunswick, were current about him, the most
extravagant being of a ballet he had had performed for him by fifty
naked dancing girls. There was a certain amount of exaggeration about
this, perhaps. In any case he troubled himself no longer about his
young wife.

Hannah Gropphusen indemnified herself in her own way by coquetry and
flirtations, and she was soon gossipped about as much as her husband.
But those that whispered and chattered about her felt their consciences
prick them when they carried their backbiting further; the young wife
could never be accused of anything more serious.

It was noteworthy that Reimers had always felt more attracted by these
exceptions among the officers' ladies than by the typical
representatives of that class. He did not know why exactly, but he
thought he saw a certain similarity between the position of these
ladies and his own; these two and he were different from the average.

Unlike his comrades, he enjoyed visiting Frau von Stuckardt. She never
talked platitudes, she would rather remain silent, and she was a little
given to prosel