"Have you managed to finish this measure by yourself, reverend Sir?" he asked of the complacent toper.
"Man is a weak and timorous creature," answered the Blackgown sanctimoniously, "at first I thought not to be able to master it by myself, but now through God's help I am about to order a second."
"Without his divine aid you will be scarcely able to recognize your front door," said the artist laughing.
"What do you know about that?" rejoined the Parson with a severe look. "He whom a merciful Deity has blest with the capacity of carrying his four measures of Bergstrasser, is ungrateful to his Maker when he only drinks three." Saying this he clapped the tin cover of his stone measure in an audible manner and a hoarse voice answered from a neighbouring room: "Coming, Your Reverence, coming." And forthwith a jolly looking little figure with a big red head appeared and took away the Parson's jug.
"And to you, Sir Italiano, shall I bring once more a bucket of water and a thimbleful of wine?" asked the small man, who knew Felix from his former sojourn at the Hirsch.
"As usual, Klaus," answered Felix laughing, whereupon a small glass of wine and a bottle of water were set before him.
When Felix had looked more attentively at his neighbor, and then cast a glance at the quaint looking waiter, he felt positive, that he had seen the two together somewhere within a few days. "Was it not Klaus, that I saw in your company lately in the ante-chamber of the new hall?" asked he of the Parson. Mr. Adam Neuser, for he was the quiet soaker, pulled down his mouth, as if his red wine tasted of the cork. "Formerly he was court-fool," he said. "But the new-fangled pietists have abolished the office. The foreign court parsons prefer making a fool of our gracious sovereign. They would not even grant him a pension; at that he wished to complain to the Kurfürst in person. All of no avail. Who knows, perhaps, I shall come down to being waiter at the Hirsch, if I do not wish to starve." And he grimly poured a beaker of red wine down his throat.
"Hallo, Neuser, how does the early rising agree with you?" said a deep voice belonging to a portly looking cleric who now entered the room. "It was a first-rate idea of our mutual friend Olevianus, to punish you by appointing you to conduct morning prayer, ha, ha, ha."
"I have scored him down for that, Inspector," rejoined the ruddy faced Neuser, "and I think the time is coming when we shall drive the Trevians, Silesians and French out of South Germany, where they have no business."
"You forget the Italians," inserted Felix laughing.