less, eccentric gentleman, who took him first as page or attendant,
intending to make him a superior valet de chambre. Gradually, however,
the Baron fancied that he detected in the boy a capacity for better
things; his condescending feeling of protection had grown into an
attachment for the handsome, amiable, grateful young fellow, and he
placed him in the gymnasium at Breslau, perhaps with the idea, now, of
educating him to be an intelligent companion.

The boy and his humble relatives, dazzled by this opportunity, began
secretly to consider the favor as almost equivalent to his adoption as
a son. (The Baron had once been married, but his wife and only child had
long been dead.) The old man, of course, came to look upon the growing
intelligence of the youth as his own work: vanity and affection became
inextricably blended in his heart, and when the cursus was over, he took
him home as the companion of his lonely life. After two or three
years, during which the young man was acquiring habits of idleness and
indulgence, supposing his future secure, the Baron died,--perhaps too
suddenly to make full provision for him, perhaps after having kept up
the appearance of wealth on a life-annuity, but, in any case, leaving
very little, if any, property to Otto. In his disappointment, the latter
retained certain family papers which the Baron had intrusted to his
keeping. The ring was a gift, and he wore it in remembrance of his
benefactor.

Wandering about, Micawber-like, in hopes that something might turn up,
he reached Posen, and there either met or heard of the Polish Count,
Ladislas Kasincsky, who was seeking a tutor for his only son. His
accomplishments, and perhaps, also, a certain aristocratic grace of
manner unconsciously caught from the Baron von Herisau, speedily won for
him the favor of the Count and Countess Kasincsky, and emboldened him to
hope for the hand of the Countess' sister, Helmine ----, to whom he was
no doubt sincerely attached. Here Johann Helm, or "Jean," a confidential
servant of the Count, who looked upon the new tutor as a rival,
yet adroitly flattered his vanity for the purpose of misleading and
displacing him, appears upon the stage. "Jean" first detected Otto's
passion; "Jean," at an epicurean dinner, wormed out of Otto the secret
of the Herisau documents, and perhaps suggested the part which the
latter afterwards played.

This "Jean" seemed to me to have been the evil agency in the miserable
hist