XII

Frederick crouched in a corner of the cab.  In a passion of shame, he called himself the vilest names.  He removed his slouched hat, which he had not yet replaced by the New York chimney-pot, wiped the sweat from his brow, and beat his fist against his forehead.

“My poor father!  Within a month, I shall probably be no more nor less than the official kept man of a prostitute.  Everybody will know me and pay homage to me.  Every German barber in New York will tell his patrons who my father is, and who I am, and what I live by, and whom I am running after.  I shall become that worthless little fiend’s lap dog, her monkey to perform tricks for her, her procurer.  The German colonies in every city, large or small, that we visit will behold in me a typical example of the loathsome degree to which a scion of the German nobility can sink, into what a cesspool of vice a man who was once a good man, husband, and father can descend.”

While being bowled rapidly down Broadway, Frederick, in his state of introspection and shame, looked blindly upon the houses as they glided by.  Suddenly he started up from his crouching position.  The sign of the Hoffman House had struck his eye and recalled the appointment the men on the Hamburg had made.  He consulted his watch, and found it was just about the time they had set, between twelve and one.  He called to the driver, but before the horse could be brought to a stop, the cab had rolled some distance beyond the hotel.  Frederick got out, paid the coachman, and in a few moments was inside the well-known New York bar-room.

He saw a long bar, marble slabs, marble wainscoting, polished brass, polished silver, shining mirrors, on which there was not the smallest speck of dust, very many shining glasses, empty glasses, glasses with straws sticking in them, and glasses partially filled with bits of ice.  Bar-keepers in spotless white linen prepared the famous American drinks, innumerable in variety, with a dexterity bordering on art and a stolidity out of which nothing could shake them.

The wall behind the bar was studded within reaching distance with an array of gleaming polished metal taps; back of the bar were the passageways to the pantries and kitchen.  Oil paintings hung above the taps and doorways.  Over the heads of the business men standing or leaning at the bar, with derbies or silk hats shoved back from their foreheads, Frederick saw a delicious woman’s figure by Courbet; sheep by Troyon; a bright seascape with clouds by Dupre; several choice pieces by Daubigny, sheep on a dune landscape, a pool reflecting the full moon hanging low over the horizon and two cud-chewing oxen; a Corot—­a tree, a cow, water, a glorious evening sky; a Diaz—­a pond, old birches, light reflected in the water; a Rousseau—­a gigantic tree in a storm; a Millet—­a pot with turnips, pewter spoons and knives; a dark portrait by Delacroix; another Courbet, a landscape; a small Bastien-Lepage, a girl and a man in the grass with a great deal of light; and many other excellent pictures.  He was so fascinated that he almost forgot his recent experience and his purpose in coming.