But, oh the ungrateful one!  He would not allow himself to be outshone.  Fritz Nettenmair danced jovially, as one who is at home in the world and knows how to treat the species that wears long hair and aprons; his brother was a stiff figure in comparison.  He did not keep time with his head, nor, if the step was made with the left foot on the down beat, throw the upper part of his body to the right and vice versa; he did not now and again, with the boldness of a genius, slide across the hall and outdistance other couples.  He danced neither jovially nor as one who is familiar with the world and knows how to treat the species that wears long hair and aprons; yet all eyes remained fixed on him, and Fritz Nettenmair outdid himself in vain.

It was the dullest ball that Fritz Nettenmair had ever experienced; it could not have been more so if Fritz Nettenmair had stayed at home.  Fritz Nettenmair proclaimed the fact with mighty oaths, and the important people who had drunk his champagne agreed with him in his opinion, as they always did.

Some of the important women expressed to Frau Nettenmair their righteous and friendly indignation at her brother-in-law.  That he had not asked his sister-in-law for the first dance betrayed an unpardonable disparagement of her.  Frau Nettenmair, who felt the universal wrong done to her husband as deeply as if it had been done to herself, said that her brother-in-law had long known that she would only have turned him down if he had.  But still Apollonius was only admired and honored more and more, and consequently the ball only became still duller.  It became so dull, in fact, that Fritz Nettenmair left with his wife at an hour when as a rule he was only just beginning to be really jovial.  Nevertheless he heaped coals of fire on his ungrateful brother’s head.  He asked the girl in his brother’s name to allow Apollonius to accompany her home.  Then he went out of the little room at the side into the hall again to his wife, and with her left the house, to the unfeigned despair of the important people, who were still thirsty for champagne.

After he had performed his enforced knightly service for his lady, Apollonius found the door of the paternal home open and all its inmates already asleep.  At least there was no light to be seen anywhere and everything was still.  His brother had assigned to him the little room at the left of the second-story piazza.  Fortunately for Apollonius, the six years had not altered the house as they had its inmates.  He went softly through the back door, past Moldau who growled in a friendly way and whose rough neck he stroked full of gratitude for this sign of constancy, mounted the stairs, walked the length of the piazza and found a bed in his little room.  But before he undressed he still sat for a long time on the chair by the window and compared what he had found with what he had left.  Before he lay down for the night he had determined on his future course of action.  The next morning he must learn what he was to do here, his relation to his father’s house must be clearly settled.  If there was no work for him, he would be on his way back to Cologne before the day was over.