“I say, Ritter,” he said, shaking hands with the men, “if you think I’m not thirsty, you’re very much mistaken.”  He examined the bottle.  “The deuce!  Without me to help him, the wretch taps one of the twenty bottles of Johannisberger with which a Chicago pork packer presented him when he made a portrait of his humpbacked daughter.  Well, now that one is gone, another may as well follow.  Gentlemen, isn’t this a jolly place for little carousals?” Pointing to the Madonna from Ochsenfurt-on-the-Main.  “Isn’t she a smart little body?  She certainly is not by Pappe.  I myself collect nothing but Japanese works.”  The fact seemed quite to accord with his appearance.  “I’m nothing but a poor dog now, but inside of four or five years I intend to have the wherewithal, and the collecting of things Japanese will proceed by electricity.  There’s no race that can compete with those fellows in art.  But now I want to tell you something.”  He turned to Ritter.  “With your kind permission, I’ll go call Lobkowitz and, what is more, I’ll call Miss Eva.  Just now, as I passed through her room, she told me she would like to meet the hero of the Roland.”  Without awaiting an answer, he left the room; and within a few moments Lobkowitz, who collaborated with Ritter, and Miss Burns, the pupil, appeared.

After the conventional greetings were over, the little Madonna was used as a welcome occasion for starting conversation again, which had begun to lag a bit on the entrance of the newcomers.  Willy held the statue, a little less than three feet high, against different panels of the wall to see how it looked for permanent placing there.  A spot was finally chosen, and the Madonna was fastened to it temporarily.

The stone-cutter’s helper brought another bottle of the heavy, expensive wine, more hock glasses, large Delft plates, and a mountain of sandwiches.  Though Frederick and Peter had declared they must end their too lengthy visit, a fresh wave of conviviality swept over the company and held them on.  A half hour passed, and another half hour, and a whole hour, and still the new friends were sitting over their German wine and still they were discussing that inexhaustible theme so dear to all of them, German art.

“It is an eternal shame,” said Frederick, “that the spirit which created the art of the old Greeks cannot be united with that profound German spirit, an entirely new spirit, which characterises the works of Adam Krafft, Veit Stoss, and Peter Vischer.”

“Doctor von Kammacher,” Miss Burns asked, “have you ever done any work in sculpture?” Miss Burns spoke a correct German.  Her father was a Dutchman, her mother a German, and when her parents settled in London, she was only a child of three.

“Doctor von Kammacher exudes talent at every pore,” said Willy, answering in Frederick’s place.  “I can testify to it.”  Willy Snyders’ passion for collecting had manifested itself while he was still a boy.  Among his treasures had been some copies of so-called “beer gazettes,” humorous sheets got up to be read at German students’ merrymaking.  The copies in his possession contained sketches by Frederick, both of a humorous and serious character.