"Well?"
"Felix Lanzberg is to be married."
The Baroness is speechless; she opens her mouth, stares at the Colonel, clutches his arm, and only after several seconds she stammers softly: "The--the--certain--Lanzberg?"
"Yes--it is considered certain."
"Whom?"
"Look around."
The Baroness looks around. In the back seat of a carriage just rolling past them sit two ladies, one of whom, a woman in the fifties, tastelessly dressed, loaded with cameos and Florentine mosaics, has the piercing eyes, the excessive thinness as well as the aimless, twitching movements of a very uneasy temperament, while her neighbor at the left, beautiful and young, lazily crumpling her striking toilet, leans back among the cushions, the embodiment of dissatisfied indolence. A student with a bright red cap occupies the small seat opposite. On the box, usurping the coachman's raised seat, is a short individual with a crimson cravat between a blue shirt and purple face, a short, bright yellow foulard coat and large Panama hat. He smacks his lips incessantly at the horses, in driving holds his elbows far out from his sides so that one could easily place a travelling bag under each arm, and groans and puffs from exertion and attention. Near him, faultlessly erect, arms solemnly crossed on his chest, sits a majestic coachman, every feature expressing the despair of a distinguished servant who, in a weak hour, had let himself be persuaded to enter the service of an ordinary millionnaire.
"Who is this elegant gentleman?" asked the Baroness, raising her lorgnon, still wholly absorbed in contemplating the interesting foulard back.
"Felix Lanzberg's future father-in-law, Mr. Harfink."
"He?" sighs the Baroness, emphatically. "Poor Felix! He does not deserve such punishment."