‘Scarcely long enough to warm them.’

‘What do you . . . fiddle!’

‘They are not Hohenzollerns!’

‘It is true,’ Dr. Schlesien called.  ’No, but you learn discipline; you build.  I say wid you, not Hohenzollerns you build!  But you shall look above:  Eyes up.  Ire necesse est.  Good, but mount; you come to something.  Have ideas.’

‘Good, but when do we reach your level?’

’Sir, I do not say more than that we do not want instruction from foreigners.’

’Pupil to paedagogue indeed.  You have the wreath in Music, in Jurisprudence, Chemistry, Scholarship, Beer, Arms, Manners.’

Dr. Schlesien puffed a tempest of tobacco and strode.

‘He is chiselling for wit in the Teutonic block,’ Colney said, falling back to Fenellan.

Fenellan observed:  ’You might have credited him with the finished sculpture.’

‘They’re ahead of us in sticking at the charge of wit.’

‘They’ve a widening of their swallow since Versailles.’

‘Manners?’

’Well, that’s a tight cravat for the Teutonic thrapple!  But he’s off by himself to loosen it.’

Victor came on the couple testily.  ’What are you two concocting!  I say, do keep the peace, please.  An excellent good fellow; better up in politics than any man I know; understands music; means well, you can see.  You two hate a man at all serious.  And he doesn’t bore with his knowledge.  A scholar too.’

’If he’ll bring us the atmosphere of the groves of Academe, he may swing his ferule pickled in himself, and welcome,’ said Fenellan.

‘Yes!’ Victor nodded at a recognized antagonism in Fenellan; ’but Colney’s always lifting the Germans high above us.’

‘It’s to exercise his muscles.’

Victor headed to the other apartments, thinking that the Rev. Septimus and young Sowerby, Old England herself, were spared by the diversion of these light skirmishing shots from their accustomed victims to the ’masculine people of our time.  His friends would want a drilling to be of aid to him in his campaign to come.  For it was one, and a great one.  He remembered his complete perception of the plan, all the elements of it, the forward whirling of it, just before the fall on London Bridge.  The greatness of his enterprise laid such hold of him that the smallest of obstacles had a villanous aspect; and when, as anticipated, Colney and Fenellan were sultry flies for whomsoever they could fret, he was blind to the reading of absurdities which caused Fredi’s eyes to stream and Lady Grace beside him to stand awhile and laugh out her fit.  Young Sowerby appeared forgiving enough—­he was a perfect gentleman:  but Fredi’s appalling sense of fun must try him hard.  And those young fellows are often more wounded by a girl’s thoughtless laughter than by a man’s contempt.  Nataly should have protected him.  Her face had the air of a smiling general satisfaction; sign of a pleasure below the mark required; sign too of a sleepy partner for a battle.  Even in the wonderful kitchen, arched and pillared (where the explanation came to Nesta of Madame Callet’s frequent leave of absence of late, when an inferior dinner troubled her father in no degree), even there his Nataly listened to the transports of the guests with benign indulgence.