“What does ‘like’ mean?” asked Franck.  “I have heard the word so often.”

“Would you believe,” Willy said to Frederick, “that that ox has been here over a year and doesn’t know a word of English?”

“‘Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles!’” Franck began to sing.

“Goodness gracious!” said Willy.  “His toothache has begun to bother him again.”

“‘Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,’” sang Franck.

“But I do!” cried Willy. “Silentium! When Franck begins to sing and Lobkowitz to yawn and Ritter empties his first glass on the table-cloth, we’ll soon be lying stretched out under the table.”

The cook had seated himself decorously and was holding the mandolin in position.  With his cap of white linen and his white linen jacket and apron, he cut a droll figure among those correctly dressed young men.  Willy Snyders poured some vino nero for him into a tumbler, and he struck a few notes by way of prelude, though hesitating to interrupt Franck and begin.  He kept his face, glowing from the kitchen fire, turned toward Franck with an expression of courteous waiting and politely besought him in Italian to keep on singing.  Finally, since Franck, instead of answering, arose, gave him a comically commanding look, and waved his fork like a baton, he began, striking up an accompaniment with a catching rhythm, which titillated his auditors’ nerves.  He was an excellent singer and a master-hand at playing the mandolin.  He gave those well-known street-ballads which one hears everywhere in Italy, especially in Naples:  “Addio mia bella Napoli,” “Funiculi Funicula,” “L’altro ieri a Piedigrotta,” “Margherita di Parete era sarta delle signore,” and also more serious songs, such as the languishing “Ogni sera di sotto all’ mio balcone sento cantar una canzon d’ amore.”

The cook’s melodies undoubtedly charmed back his home to him, though in colours less glorious and alluring to himself, perhaps, than to the artists, whether they had been in Italy or not.  Frederick leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  The dining-room was filled with the fumes of cigars and cigarettes, and the electric bulbs shone as in a mist.  Frederick’s thoughts carried him far, far away.  His arm hung at his side limply, while a Simon Arzt cigarette burned to a stump between his fingers—­throughout his adventures, his silver cigarette case had remained safe in his pocket.

Before his inner vision rose the coasts and blue gulfs of Italy, the brown Doric temples of Paestum and the cliffs of Amalfi, Sorrento, and Capri.  He was standing on the Posilipo.  He was with Doctor Dorn in the loggia of the zoologic station for deep-sea researches, which Hans von Marees had decorated.  In Rome, Frederick had sat over many a bottle of wine with Hans von Marees and Otto, who died while working on the Luther Memorial in Berlin.  He saw himself in the famous Est Est Cafe in Rome, or visiting the malaria patients in the hospital on the Capitol, or promenading in the sunshine on Monte Pincio with a deaf and dumb sculptor, with whom he then went to an afternoon concert.  He had laughed because the artist explained that he did not hear the music with his ears, but felt it, or rather felt the drum alone, in his belly.