the capital and to pay Ilka the one thousand florins (and this was a
point upon which Mother Uberta strenuously insisted) in weekly
instalments.

The next day the contract was drawn up in legal form, properly stamped
and signed; whereupon Mother Uberta and Ilka started with Hahn and
Fritz for Berlin.


III.


The restaurant of the "Haute Noblesse" was a splendid specimen of
artistic decoration. The walls were frescoed with all sorts of
marvellous hunting scenes, which Fritz had gradually incorporated in
his own autobiography. Here stags were fleeing at a furious speed
before a stout young gentleman on horseback, who was levelling his
deadly aim at them; there the same stout young gentleman, with
whiskers and general appearance slightly altered, was standing behind
a big tree, firing at a hare who was coming straight toward him,
pursued by a pack of terrible hounds; again, on a third wall, the
stout young gentleman had undergone a further metamorphosis which
almost endangered his identity; he was standing at the edge of a
swamp, and a couple of ducks were making somersaults in the air, as
they fluttered with bruised wings down to where the dogs stood
expecting them; on wall number four, which contained the
_chef-d'oeuvre_ of the collection, the young Nimrod, who everywhere
bore a more or less remote resemblance to Fritz Hahn, was engaged in a
mortal combat with a wild boar, and was performing miraculous feats of
strength and prowess. The next room,--to which it was, for some