ss won't make much difference to him. He'll be the same man
still. You just think the matter over, Herr Commissionsrath; I shall
come back in a day or two with my little baron, and get your answer."
With which Manasseh took his departure.

Bosswinkel began to think over the affair at once, but, spite of his
boundless avarice and his utter absence of conscience or character, he
could not endure the idea of Albertine's marrying that disgusting
Benjamin, and in a sudden attack of rectitude he determined that he
would keep his word to Tussmann.

CHAPTER IV.

TREATS OF PORTRAITS, A GREEN FACE, JUMPING MICE,
AND ISRAELITISH CURSES.

Albertine, soon after she made Edmund's acquaintance, came to the
conclusion that the big oil portrait of her father which hung in her
room was a horribly bad likeness of him, and dreadfully scratched into
the bargain. She pointed out to her father that though it was so many
years since the portrait was painted, he was really looking much
younger, and better in every way, than the painter had represented him.
Also, she particularly disliked the gloomy, sulky expression of the
face, the old-fashioned clothes, and a preposterous bunch of flowers
which he was holding between his fingers in a delicate manner,
displaying in so doing certain handsome diamond rings.

She talked so much, and so long, on this subject, that at last her
father himself saw that the portrait was horrible, and couldn't
understand how the painter had managed to turn out such a caricature of
his well-looking person. And the more he thought the matter over and
looked at the picture, the more he was convinced that it was an
execrable daub. He determined to take it down, and stow it away in the
lumber room.

Albertine said that was the best thing that could be done, but that,
all the same, she was accustomed to see dear papa's picture in her
room, that the bare space on the wall would be such a blank to her that
she should never feel comfortable; so that the only course was for dear
papa to have _another_ portrait painted, by some painter who knew what
he was about, and that _she_ could think of nobody but Edmund Lehsen,
so celebrated for his admirable portraits.

"My dear," the Commissionsrath said, "you don't know what you're
talking about. Those young painters are so full of conceit, they don't
know where to turn themselves, don't care how much they ask f