and, while showing in many ways that he
saw I was unused to hardship, he rather treated my inexperience as a
mere fortuitous circumstance than as a thing to comment or dwell on.
Han-serl, besides this, taught me how to live on my humble pay of a
florin and ten kreutzers--about two shillings--daily. I had a small
room that led out into the yard, and could consequently devote my modest
salary to my maintenance. The straitened economy of Hans himself had
enabled him to lay by about eight hundred florins, and he strongly
advised me to arrange my mode of life on a plan that would admit of such
a prudent saving.

Less for this purpose than to give my friend a strong proof of the full
confidence I reposed in his judgment and his honor, I confided to his
care all my earnings, and only begged he would provide for me as for
himself; and thus Hans and I became inseparable. We took our coffee
together at daybreak, our little soup and boiled beef at noon, and our
potato-salad, with perhaps a sardine or such like, at night for supper;
the "Viertelwein"--the fourth of a bottle--being equitably divided
between us to cheer our hearts and cement good-fellowship on certainly
as acrid a liquor as ever served two such excellent ends.

None of the clerks would condescend to know us. Herr Fripper, the
cashier, would nod to us in the street, but the younger men never
recognized us at all, save in some expansive moment of freedom by a wink
or a jerk of the head. We were in a most subordinate condition, and they
made us feel it.

From Hans I learned that Herr Oppovich was a widower with two children,
a son and a daughter. The former was an irreclaimable scamp and
vagabond, whose debts had been paid over and over again, and who had
been turned out of the army with disgrace, and was now wandering about
Europe, living on his father's friends, and trading for small loans
on his family name. This was Adolph Oppovich. The girl--Sara she was
called--was, in Hanserl's judgment, not much more to be liked than her
brother. She was proud and insolent to a degree that would have been
remarkable in a princess of a reigning house. From the clerks she
exacted a homage that was positively absurd. It was not alone that
they should always stand uncovered as she passed, but that if any had
occasion to address her he should prelude what he had to say by kissing
her hand, an act of vassalage that in Austria is limited to persons of
the humblest kind.

"She rega