The small, delicate old man, with the peaked hat and short black velvet
cloak, was Abbe Picard, a gay Parisian, who had come to Leyden ten years
before and gave French lessons in the wealthy families of the city. He
had been Wilhelm's teacher too, but the musician's father, the Receiver-
General, would have nothing to do with the witty abbe; for he was said
to have left his beloved France on account of some questionable
transactions, and Herr Cornelius scented in him a Spanish spy. The
other gentleman, a grey-haired, unusually stout man, of middle height,
who required a great deal of cloth for his fur-bordered cloak, was Signor
Lamperi, the representative of the great Italian mercantile house of
Bonvisi in Antwerp, who was in the habit of annually coming to Leyden on
business for a few weeks with the storks and swallows, and was a welcome
guest in every tap-room as the inexhaustible narrator of funny stories.
Before these two men entered the house, they were joined by a third,
preceded by two servants carrying lanterns. A wide cloak enveloped his
tall figure; he too stood on the threshold of old age and was no stranger
to Wilhelm, for the Catholic Monseigneur Gloria, who often came to Leyden
from Haarlem, was a patron of the noble art of music, and when the young
man set out on his journey to Italy had provided him, spite of his
heretical faith, with valuable letters of introduction.

Wilhelm, as the door closed behind the three gentlemen, continued his
way. Belotti had told him the day before that the young lady seemed very
ill, but since her aunt was receiving guests, Henrica was doubtless
better.

The first story in the Hoogstraten mansion was brightly lighted, but in
the second a faint, steady glow streamed into Nobelstrasse from a single
window, while she for whom the lamp burned sat beside a table, her eyes
sparkling with a feverish glitter, as she pressed her forehead against