The renowned founder of the 'Credit Austro-Dalmate' was a small, thin man, with blue eyes of an acuteness almost insupportable, in a face of neutral color.

His ever-courteous manner, his attire, simple and neat, his speech serious and discreet, gave to him that species of distinction so common to old diplomatists.

But the dangerous adventurer was betrayed by the glance which Hafner could not succeed in veiling with indifferent amiability.

The man-of-the-world, which he prided himself upon having become, was visible through all by certain indefinable trifles, and above all by those eyes, of a restlessness so singular in so wealthy a man, indicating an enigmatical and obscure past of dark and contrasting struggles, of covetous sharpness, of cold calculation and indomitable energy.

Fanatical Montfanon, who abused the daughter with such unjustness, judged the father justly.