Madame Langai's elder brother, John, was notoriously the greatest bore in the town, whom nobody, from the members of his own family down to his coffee-house acquaintances, could endure for a moment.

Only his father made much of him.

For all his great wealth, he was very stingy and greedy; he even lent money at usury to his best friends.

Our amusing little friend Maksi was this man's son.
The slender, fanciful damsel, Henrietta, who appeared in that family like an errant angel specially sent there to be tormented for the sins of her whole race, was the orphan daughter of another son of old Lapussa, who had lost father and mother at the same time in the most tragical manner; they had both been drowned by the capsizing of a small boat on the Danube.

Henrietta herself had only been saved with the utmost difficulty.