Gotzkowsky lost in this hour, not only the three hundred thousand dollars, but, what he valued above all earthly treasures, the affection of his daughter, and both without any fault of his own.  Elise forced herself to close her heart against her father, or at least to conquer her grief at the supposed indifference, or quiet, lukewarm inclination.  And yet this ardent heart longed for love, as the plant longs for the sunshine which is to penetrate it, and ripen it into wonderful bloom.  Had the friend and companion of her youth, Bertram, been near her, she would have confided all her sorrows to him, and found consolation on his breast.  But he had been absent for about a year on his long journey; and Elise’s heart, which had always clung to him with a sisterly affection, became more and more alienated from the friend of her youth.

But fate or perhaps her evil destiny ordained that, about this time, she should make the acquaintance of a young man who quickly won the love of her vacant heart, and filled its void.

This young man was Colonel Feodor von Brenda, whom the fortune of war had thrown into Berlin.

Elise loved him.  With joy and delight, with the unbounded confidence of innocence, she gave her whole heart up to this new sensation.

And, indeed, this young colonel was a very brilliant and imposing personage.  He was one of those Russian aristocrats who, on the Continent, in their intercourse with the noblest and most exclusive society of Germany and France, acquire that external adroitness and social refinement, that brilliant graceful polish, which so well conceals the innate barbarism and cunning of the natural character of the Russian.

He was a bright companion, sufficiently conversant with arts and sciences to talk on every subject, without committing himself.  He knew how to converse on all topics fluently enough, without betraying the superficial character of his knowledge and his studies.  Educated at the court of the Empress Elizabeth, life had appeared to him in all its voluptuousness and fullness, but at the same time had soon been stripped of all its fancies and illusions.  For him there existed no ideals and no innocence, no faith, not even a doubt which in itself implies a glimmer of faith; for him there was nothing but the plain, naked, undeceivable disenchantment, and pleasure was the only thing in which he still believed.

This pleasure he pursued with all the energy of his originally noble and powerful character; and as all his divinities had been destroyed, all holy ideals had dissolved into myths and hollow phantoms, he wished to secure one divinity, at least, to whom he could raise an altar, whom he could worship:  this divinity was Pleasure.

Pleasure he sought everywhere, in all countries; and the more ardently and eagerly he sought it, the less was he able to find it.  Pleasure was the first modest, coy woman who cruelly shunned him, and the more he pursued her, the more coldly did she seem to fly him.