Beppo’s destination was to the Duchess of Graatli’s palace.  Nearing it, he perceived Luigi endeavouring to gain a passage beside the burly form of Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz, who presently seized him and hurled him into the road.  As Beppo was sidling up the courtway, Jacob sprang back; Luigi made a rush; Jacob caught them both, but they wriggled out of his clutch, and Luigi, being the fearfuller, ran the farthest.  While he was out of hearing, Beppo told Jacob to keep watch upon Luigi, as the bearer of an amorous letter from a signor of quality to Aennchen, the which he himself desired to obtain sight of; “for the wench has caused me three sleepless nights,” he confessed frankly.  Jacob affected not to understand.  Luigi and Beppo now leaned against the wall on either side of him and baited him till he shook with rage.

“He is the lord of the duchess, his mistress—­what a lucky fellow!” said Luigi.  “When he’s dog at the gates no one can approach her.  When he isn’t, you can fancy what!”—­“He’s only a mechanical contrivance; he’s not a man,” said Beppo.  “He’s the principal flea-catcher of the palace,” said Luigi—­“here he is all day, and at night the devil knows where he hunts.”—­Luigi hopped in a half-circle round the exacerbated Jacob, and finally provoked an assault that gave an opening to Beppo.  They all ran in, Luigi last.  Jacob chased Beppo up the stairs, lost him, and remembered what he had said of the letter borne by Luigi, for whom he determined to lie in waiting.  “Better two in there than one,” he thought.  The two courted his Aennchen openly; but Luigi, as the bearer of an amorous letter from the signor of quality, who could be no other than signor Antonio-Pericles, was the one to be intercepted.  Like other jealous lovers, Jacob wanted to read Aennchen’s answer, to be cured of his fatal passion for the maiden, and on this he set the entire force of his mind.

Running up by different staircases, Beppo and Luigi came upon Aennchen nearly at the same time.  She turned a cold face on Beppo, and requested Luigi to follow her.  Astonished to see him in such favour, Beppo was ready to provoke the quarrel before the kiss when she returned; but she said that she had obeyed her mistress’s orders, and was obeying the duchess in refusing to speak of them, or of anything relating to them.  She had promised him an interview in that little room leading into the duchess’s boudoir.  He pressed her to conduct him.  “Ah; then it’s not for me you come,” she said.  Beppo had calculated that the kiss would open his way to the room, and the quarrel disembarrass him of his pretty companion when there.  “You have come to listen to conversation again,” said Aennchen.  “Ach! the fool a woman is to think that you Italians have any idea except self-interest when you, when you . . . talk nonsense to us.  Go away, if you please.  Good-evening.”  She dropped a curtsey with a surly coquetry, charming of its kind.  Beppo protested that the room was dear to him because there first he had known for one blissful half-second the sweetness of her mouth.