"I will go at once and put on my finest coat and my shoes of silk." My father smiled.
"You need not be particular as to the silk shoes.

'Tis to see Master von Sturm, not to court pretty Mistress Ysolinde, that I asked you to visit the lawyer's house by the Weiss Thor." But I was not sorry to be able to proclaim my destination as loud as I dared without causing suspicion.
"Hanne," I cried down the turret stairs, "I pray you bring me the silken shoes with the ribbon bows of silk.

I am going down to Master von Sturm's house; also my gold chain and bonnet of blue velvet with the golden feather in it which I won at the last arrow-shooting." I saw the fluttering of the fan falter and stop.

A light foot went pattering up the stairway and a door slammed in the tower.
Then I laughed, like the vain, silly boy I was.
"Mistress Helene," I said to myself, "you will find that poor Hugo, whom you flouted and despised, can yet pay his debts!" So I put on the fine clothes which I wore on festal days and sallied forth.

Now, though the lower orders still hated my father and all that came out of the Red Tower, or indeed, for the matter of that, out of the Wolfsberg, with hardly concealed malice--yet there were many in the city, specially among those of the upper classes, who began to think well of my determination to try another way of life than that to which I had been born.