For the last two years Paul had owned a villa on the Uhlenhorst, in the Carlstrasse, and there the fast trotter drew up.  Wilhelm had said but little during the drive, and Paul had confined the expression of his feeling of delight to clapping his friend on the shoulder from time to time, and pressing his hand.  Rather less than half an hour’s drive brought them to their destination.  Paul would not hear of Wilhelm making any alteration in his dress, but drew him as he was into the smoking room on the ground floor, where Malvine came to meet him, and received him in her hearty but quiet and uneffusive manner.  She was the picture of health, but had grown perhaps a little too stout for her age.  She wore a morning wrap of red velvet and gold lace, and looked, in that costly attire, like a princess or a banker’s wife.

“You must be very cold and tired,” she said; “the coffee is ready, come at once to breakfast—­that will put some warmth into you—­you can dress afterward.”  She hurried before them into the next room, where they found an amply spread table over which hovered the fragrant smell of several steaming dishes.  It was a lavish breakfast in the English style; beside tea and coffee there were eggs, soles, ham, cold turkey, lobster salad, and several excellent wines.  A servant in the livery of a “Jager” waited at table.

Wilhelm shook his head at the sight of all this splendor.  “But, my dear lady, so much trouble on my behalf!”

“You are quite mistaken,” Paul answered for Malvine, and not without a smile of satisfied pride; “it is our usual breakfast—­we have it so every day.”

Wilhelm looked at him surprised, and then remarked after a short pause:  “I would never have written to you, if I had dreamed that you would get up before daybreak, and upset your whole household in order to fetch me from the station.”

“Why, what nonsense!  We are quite used to getting up early.  At Friesenmoor we have to be still earlier.”

“But that is in the summer.”

“So it is, but then our broken rest is not made up to us by the sight of a friend.”

While they devoured the good things, and Paul, who despised tea and coffee, sipped his slightly warmed claret, he remarked, between two mouthfuls, “I was struck all of a heap by your letter.  You turned out! the most harmless, law-abiding citizen I ever heard of!  What in the world did you do?  You need not mind telling me.”

“I cannot say that I am aware of having committed any crime, Paul.”

“Come now, something must have happened, for the police does not take a step of that kind without some provocation—­it’s only your beggarly Progressives who think that, but nobody who knows the fundamental principles of our government and its officials would believe it.”

“You seem to have become a warm admirer of the government.”

“Always was!  But, upon my word, when I see the way the opposition parties go on I am more so than ever—­positively fanatical.”