gentlemen is tall, slender, animated; his cheeks wear no bloom; they
are pale. His carriage is easy and smooth. Some levity is visible in
his features, which are delicate, but his keen, glancing eye is
disagreeable beside Seraphin's pure soul-mirror. Greifmann's sister
Louise, not an ordinary beauty, owns the fourth million. She is seated
between the young gentlemen; the folds of her costly dress lie heaped
around her; her hands are engaged with a fan, and her eyes are sending
electric glances into Gerlach's quick depths. But these flashing beams
fail to kindle; they expire before they penetrate far into those
depths. His eyes are bright, but they refuse to gleam with intenser
fire. Strange, too, for a twofold reason; first, because glances from
the eyes of beautiful women seldom suffer young men to remain cool;
secondly, because a paternal scheme designs that Louise shall be
engaged and married to the fire-proof hero.

Millions of money are rare; and should millions strive to form an
alliance, it is in conformity with the genius of every solid banking
establishment to view this as quite a natural tendency.

For eight days Mr. Seraphin has been on a visit at the _palais_
Greifmann, but as yet he has yielded no positive evidence of intending
to join his own couple of millions with the million of Miss Louise.

Whilst Seraphin converses with the beautiful young lady, Carl Greifmann
cursorily examines a newspaper which a servant has just brought him on
a silver salver.

"Every age has its folly," suddenly exclaims the banker. "In the
seventeenth century people were busy during thirty years cutting one
another's throats for religion's sake--or rather, in deference to the
pious hero of the faith from Sweden and his fugleman Oxenstiern. In the
eighteenth century, they decorated their heads with periwigs and
pigtails, making it a matter of conjecture whether both ladies and
gentlemen were not in the act of developing themselves from monkeydom
into manhood.

"Elections are the folly of our century. See here, my good fellow, look
what is written here: In three days the municipal elections will come
off throughout the country--in eighteen days the election of delegates.
For eighteen days the whole country is to labor in election throes.
Every man twenty-one years of age, having a wife and a homestead, is to
be employed in rooting from out the soil of party councilmen, mayors,
and deputies.

"And during the period these root