In the beer garden, Balduin, a student of Prague, leaves his rystering companions. He is scarcely seated in a quiet corner when a hideous, shriveled-up old man taps him on the shoulder and whispers vaguely of a big inheritance for Prague's finest swordsman and wildest student if he will enter into a certain agreement. Balduin rebuffs him, satirically asking his weird companion to procure him "the luckiest ticket in a lottery or a doweried wife." The old man goes off chuckling, and thence onward, persistently shadows Balduin, exerting a sinister influence over him while Balduin is still disconsolate under the frowns of fortune.