"My brother Philip."
"How strange!"
"Why so?"
"I was just thinking of him."
"That happens so often—and particularly in a large city, and at an hour when everybody is on the go. I shall not be surprised if we meet him again at the Exhibition. Philip is a great lover of pictures, and is not bad himself at drawing and painting. There, he is stopping—I thought he would—Philip understands the proprieties."
At the next moment they were side by side with the cabriolet.
"Good morning, Ferdinande! Good morning, Reinhold! Stunning hit that I strike you on the first day! Wretched pun, Ferdinande—eh? Looks fine, our cousin, with his brown face and beard—but he doesn't need to be ashamed of the lady at his side—eh? Where are you going—to the Exhibition? That's fine! We'll meet there.—My nag acts like crazy today.—Au revoir!"
With the tip of his whip he touched the black horse, which was already beginning to rear in the traces, and sped off, nodding back once more over his broad shoulders.
"I should not have recognized Philip again," said Reinhold. "He doesn't resemble you—I mean Uncle and you—at all."
In fact, a greater contrast is scarcely conceivable than that between the broad, ruddy, beardless, clean-shaven face of the young man, with his closely clipped hair, and the splendid face of Uncle Ernst, with its deep furrows and heavy growth of gray hair and beard, or the stately pallor and aristocratic beauty of Ferdinande.