"The one who belongs to the Uhlans."
"Impossible."
"Moltke values him highly and he must have done some excellent work."
"He does not impress me. It was all an affair of hunting libraries and plagiarizing. Any one who is a trifle ingenious can turn out books like Humboldt or Ranke."
"Four of a kind. Fourteen aces."
"Five sequence to king."
And while the trick was being played, one could hear from the billiard room near by the sound of the balls and the falling of the little pins.
In the two back rooms of the club, the narrow side of which looked out on a sunny but tiresome garden, there were in all only six or eight men, all silent, all more or less absorbed in their whist or dominoes, and not the least absorbed were the two men who had just been talking about Ella and Afzelius. The game ran high, and so the two did not look up until they saw, through an open curved niche, a new-comer approaching from the next room. It was Wedell.
"But Wedell, if you don't bring us a lot of news, we will excommunicate you."
"Pardon, Serge, there was no definite agreement."