Then a change came; the governess disappeared, also the velvet and furs,
and they began moving. There was a period when to move was a feature of
their existence, each habitat showing a decrease in size and splendor.
Lothar was nine, a lanky boy with his hair worn _en brosse,_ in baggy
knickerbockers and turn-over white collars, when they were up on the West
Side in six half-lighted rooms, with a sloppy Hungarian servant to do all
the work. That was the time when his father taught languages and his
mother dancing. But _he_ went to a private school. Captain Heyderich
never got over his European ideas.

Those lean years came to a sudden end; Captain Heyderich's mother died in
Vienna and left him a snug little fortune. They moved once more, but this
time it was a hopeful, jubilant move, also a long one--to Paris. They
settled there blithely in an apartment on the Rue Victor Hugo, Lothar,
placed at a Lycee, coming home for weekends. He remembered the apartment
as ornate and over-furnished, voluble guests coming and going, a great
many parties, his mother, elaborately dressed, always hurrying off to
meet people in somebody's else house or hurrying home to meet them in her
own. Several times Austrian relations visited them, and Lothar had a
lively recollection of a fight one Sunday evening, when an uncle, a
large, bearded man, had accused his mother of extravagance and she had
flown into a temper and made a humiliating scene.

He was seventeen when his father died, and it was discovered that very
little money was left. Some of the relations came from Vienna and there
was a family conclave at which it was suggested to Lothar that he return
to Vienna with them and become a member of the clan. Separation from his
mother was a condition and he refused. He did this not so much from love
of her as from fear of them. They represented a world of which he was