never young.
Persons with my misfortune are never young. That, it may as well be
said, is the saddest feature of the case. One has no true spirit, one
has no self-confidence, one hardly ventures to ask a lady for the
honor of a dance, because one does not desire to cause her an
embarrassment, and thus the years go by and one grows old, and life
has been poor and empty."

Effi gave him her hand. "Oh, you must not say such things. We women
are by no means so bad."

"Oh, no, certainly not."

"And when I recall," continued Effi, "what all I have experienced--it
is not much, for I have gone out but little, and have almost always
lived in the country--but when I recall it, I find that, after all, we
always love what is worthy of love. And then I see, too, at once that
you are different from other men. We women have sharp eyes in such
matters. Perhaps in your case the name has something to do with it.
That was always a favorite assertion of our old pastor Niemeyer. The
name, he loved to say, especially the forename, has a certain
mysterious determining influence; and Alonzo Gieshuebler, in my
opinion, opens to one a whole new world, indeed I feel almost tempted
to say, Alonzo is a romantic name, a fastidious name."

Gieshuebler smiled with a very unusual degree of satisfaction and
mustered up the courage to lay aside his silk hat, which up to this
time he had been turning in his hand. "Yes, most gracious Lady, you
hit the nail on the head that time."

Oh, I understand. I have heard about the consuls, of Kessin is said to
have so many, and at the home of the Spanish consul your father
presumably made the acquaintance of the daughter of a sea-captain, a
beautiful Andalusian girl, I suppose; Andalusian girls are always
beautiful."

"Precisely as you suppose, most gracious Lady. And my mother really
was a beautiful woman, ill as it behooves me personally to undertake
to prove it. But when your husband came here three years ago she was
still alive and still had the same fiery eyes as in her youth. He will
confirm my statement. I personally take more after the Gieshueblers,
who are people of little account, so far as external features are
concerned, but otherwise tolerably well favored. We have been living
here now for four generations, a full hundred years, and if there were
an apothecary nobility--"

"You would have a right to claim it. And I, for my part, accept your
claim as proved, and that beyond question. For us who