be discussed, as, for
example, the settling of the details of the wedding, and questions of
the dowry and the furnishing of the new home. Innstetten was now
nearly three years in office, and his house in Kessin, while not
splendidly furnished, was nevertheless very well suited to his
station, and it seemed advisable to gain from correspondence with him
some idea of what he already had, in order not to buy anything
superfluous. When Mrs. von Briest was finally well enough informed
concerning all these details it was decided that the mother and
daughter should go to Berlin, in order, as Briest expressed himself,
to buy up the trousseau for Princess Effi.

Effi looked forward to the sojourn in Berlin with great pleasure, the
more so because her father had consented that they should take
lodgings in the Hotel du Nord. "Whatever it costs can be deducted from
the dowry, you know, for Innstetten already has everything." Mrs. von
Briest forbade such "mesquineries" in the future, once for all, but
Effi, on the other hand, joyously assented to her father's plan,
without so much as stopping to think whether he had meant it as a jest
or in earnest, for her thoughts were occupied far, far more with the
impression she and her mother should make by their appearance at the
table d'hote, than with Spinn and Mencke, Goschenhofer, and other such
firms, whose names had been provisionally entered in her memorandum
book. And her demeanor was entirely in keeping with these frivolous
fancies, when the great Berlin week had actually come.

Cousin von Briest of the Alexander regiment, an uncommonly jolly young
lieutenant, who took the _Fliegende Blatter_ and kept a record of the
best jokes, placed himself at the disposal of the ladies for every
hour he should be off duty, and so they would sit with him at the
corner window of Kranzler's, or perhaps in the Cafe Bauer, when
permissible, or would drive out in the afternoon to the Zoological
Garden, to see the giraffes, of which Cousin von Briest, whose name,
by the way, was Dagobert, was fond of saying: "They look like old
maids of noble birth." Every day passed according to program, and on
the third or fourth day they went, as directed, to the National
Gallery, because Dagobert wished to show his cousin the "Isle of the
Blessed." "To be sure, Cousin Effi is on the point of marrying, and
yet it may perhaps be well to have made the acquaintance of the 'Isle
of the Blessed' beforehand." His aunt g