ings will go from bad to worse, till at last, in poverty,
misery and contempt, you will--"

"For God's sake stop!" cried the Commissionsrath, "you are putting me
to a regular martyrdom. Who would have thought that Tussmann would have
been such a goose at his time of life? But you are quite right;
whatever happens, I must keep my word to him, or I'm a ruined man. Yes,
it is so ordained, Tussmann must marry Albertine."

"You're forgetting all about Baron Duemmerl," said the Goldsmith, "and
Manasseh's terrible curse. In him, if you reject Baron Benjie, you have
the most fearful enemy. He will oppose you in all your speculations;
will stick at no means of injuring your credit, take every possible
opportunity of doing you an ill turn, and never rest till he has
brought you to shame and disgrace; till the D[=a]-l[ve]s, which he laid
upon you along with his curse, has actually taken up its abode in your
house; so that, you see, whatever you do with Albertine, to whichsoever
of her wooers you give her, you get into trouble, and that is why I
said at the beginning, that you are a poor, unfortunate man, an object
of pity and commiseration."

Bosswinkel ran up and down the room like a lunatic, crying over and
over again, "It's all over with me; I am a miserable man, a ruined
Commissionsrath. O Lord, if I only could get the girl off my shoulders;
the devil take the whole lot of them, Lehsen, and Benjie, and my old
Tussmann into the bargain."

"Now," said the Goldsmith, "there is one way of getting out of all this
mess."

"What is it?" said Bosswinkel; "I'll adopt it, whatever it is."

Leonhard said, "Did you ever see the play of 'The Merchant of Venice'?"

"That's the piece," answered Bosswinkel, "where Devrient plays a
bloody-minded Jew of the name of Shylock, who wants a pound of a
merchant's flesh. Of course I've seen it, but what has that to do with
the matter?"

"You will remember," the Goldsmith said, "that there is a certain
wealthy young lady in it of the name of Portia, whose father so
arranged matters in his will that her hand is made a species of prize
in a kind of lottery. Three caskets are set out, of which her wooers
have each to choose one, and open it. The one who finds Portia's
portrait in the casket which he chooses obtains her hand. Now do you,
Commissionsrath, as a living father, do what her dead father did. Tell
the three wooers that, inasmuch as one of them is exactly the same to
you as another, they