"And what's your news, Manasseh?" the Commissionsrath inquired. Manasseh simpered most deferentially, and with much amiability, and said Mr. Bosswinkel would scarcely be prepared for the news he had to tell him, which was that that splendid young fellow, his nephew Benjamin Dümmerl, worth close upon a million of money, had just been created a baron on account of his remarkable merits, was recently come back from Italy, and had fallen desperately in love with Miss Albertine, to whom he intended to offer his hand.
We see this young. Baron Dümmerl continually in the theatres, where he swaggers in a box of the first tier, and oftener still at concerts of every description. So that we well know him to be tall, and as thin as a broom-handle; that in his dusky yellow face, overshadowed by jetty locks and whiskers, in his whole being, he is stamped with the most distinctive and unmistakeable characteristics of the Oriental race to which he belongs; that he dresses in the most extravagant style of the very latest English fashion, speaks several languages, all in the self-same twang (that of "our people"); scrapes on a violin, hammers on the piano; is an art connoisseur without acknowledge of art, and would fain play the part of a literary Mecænas; tries to be witty without wit, and spirituel without esprit; is stupidly forward, noisy, and pushing. In short, to use the concise and descriptive expression of that numerous class of individuals amongst whom his desire is to shove himself, an insufferable snob and boor. When we add to all this that he is avaricious and dirtily mean in everything that he does, it cannot be otherwise than that even those less elevated souls that fall down and worship wealth very soon leave him to himself.
When Manasseh mentioned this nephew, the thought of that approximation to a million which "Benjie" possessed passed through the Commissionsrath's mind; but along with that thought came the objection which, in his opinion, made the idea of him as a son-in-law impossible.
"My good Manasseh, you are forgetting that your nephew belongs to the old religion, and that----"
"Ho!" cried Manasseh, "what does that matter? My nephew is in love with your daughter, and wants to make her happy. A drop or two of water more or less won't make much difference to him. He'll be the same man still. You just think the matter over, Herr Commissionsrath; I shall come back in a day or two with my little baron, and get your answer." With which Manasseh took his departure.
Bosswinkel began to think over the affair at once, but, spite of his boundless avarice and his utter absence of conscience or character, he could not endure the idea of Albertine's marrying that disgusting Benjamin, and in a sudden attack of rectitude he determined that he would keep his word to Tussmann.
CHAPTER IV.
TREATS OF PORTRAITS, A GREEN FACE, JUMPING MICE, AND ISRAELITISH CURSES.
Albertine, soon after she made Edmund's acquaintance, came to the conclusion that the big oil portrait of her father which hung in her room was a horribly bad likeness of him, and dreadfully scratched into the bargain. She pointed out to her father that though it was so many years since the portrait was painted, he was really looking much younger, and better in every way, than the painter had represented him. Also, she particularly disliked the gloomy, sulky expression of the face, the old-fashioned clothes, and a preposterous bunch of flowers which he was holding between his fingers in a delicate manner, displaying in so doing certain handsome diamond rings.
She talked so much, and so long, on this subject, that at last her father himself saw that the portrait was horrible, and couldn't understand how the painter had managed to turn out such a caricature of his well-looking person. And the more he thought the matter over and looked at the picture, the more he was convinced that it was an execrable daub. He determined to take it down, and stow it away in the lumber room.