"What! a fellow like you?" said Barnewitz, thrusting his hands into his pockets with an air of contempt "I suppose you think you are wonderfully successful with the sex?"
Who knows what serious consequences might have arisen from this word-combat if the door of the billiard-room had not opened just then to admit Professor Jager, who crept in cautiously, after having first reconnoitred the room through his round glasses.
Professor Jager's appearance was never specially inviting, but on this evening there was something peculiarly unpleasant about the man's pale face. His stereotyped smile, and the drooping corners of the mouth, contrasted with his effort to give an air of solemnity to his forehead, and to look as melancholy as possible through his spectacles, so that he appeared on the whole not unlike a black tom cat who glides purring and with raised back around a person's leg, preparing to scratch his hands the next moment furiously.
Thus he drew near to the two noblemen, made a very low bow, and said:
"I beg ten thousand pardons if I am disturbing the entente cordiale of two bosom friends, but----"
"Come here, professor," said Barnewitz, who welcomed the interruption; "join us in a glass of Pichon. Waiter! another----"
"Pray, don't; many thanks. Regret infinitely that I should have interrupted you in your cozy talk; but I heard at your house, Baron Cloten, that I should find you here, and a matter of importance which I had to communicate----"
"Don't mind me, gentlemen," said Barnewitz. "I'll go into the reading-room till you have done."
"Pray, pray; I have only two words----"
"Well, all right. Call me when you have done!"