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 the light-minded Beruška and the coachman with the lackey, most heartily. Even the baroness smiled slightly in the most bewitching manner.

Old Foltýn at that moment presented a picture which it is not easy to describe. He looked around several times, paled and reddened by turns, patted down his cape and gray beard in embarrassment and his gaze finally slid to the fatal drum. It seemed to him that he comprehended it all. He was crushed.

After a few condescending words to the others the nobility betook themselves to their quarters, leaving for the time being on the occupants of the lower floors the impression that they were the most handsome and the happiest couple in all the world.

After a while we behold both in the general reception-room. The master rocks carelessly in the easychair and sketches a likeness of old Foltýn on the covers of some book. The baroness, holding in her hand a naked antique statuette, looks about the room searchingly.

“Advise me, Henry. Where shall I place it?”

“You should have left it where it was.”

“Not at all! We are inseparable. I would have been lonesome for these tender, oval, marble features.”

“But if you haul her around this way over the world she won’t last whole very long.”

“Never fear! I’ll guard her like the apple of my eye. You saw that I held the box containing her on my lap throughout the journey.”