"Now, comrade," said the fiddler to Steven, one foot upon the narrow stairs, "I will now introduce you into nobler company than ever! I have made you known to one of the newest kings and to one of the oldest Burgraves in the land. To-night you shall become acquainted with the offspring of a nation in chains—heroes, my little count, no less. Patriots of the first water!"
Count Kielmansegg was conscious that the corners of his highborn lips drooped. The patriotism of Westphalia—convulsions of a tin kettle on a mere corner of the vast Napoleonic fire, pot-house heroes that roared their enthusiasm into the night to the clink of the can.... Bah!
There was a twinkle in the musician's eye that mocked his words. He went nimbly up the stair, and his companion followed with the heavy foot of fatigue.
A drunken shout greeted the entrance of Geiger-Hans. Steven stood on the threshold, his lip curling into ever more open scorn at the sight which greeted them: three dishevelled youths, in different humours of intoxication, extravagantly costumed according to the taste of the militant Studiosus: tunics of velvet, shabby but much befrogged; jack-boots, gigantic spurs that had, doubtless, never pressed horse's sides; poetically open collars; uncut hair; tobacco-pouch and rapier on belt; china pipes in hand, six feet long, tasselled with Fatherland colours. A squat individual, exuberantly bearded, sprawled at the head of the table and was expostulating with vehemence. He had embraced the can of wine and was defending it with drawn spadroon against the other two, who—the one with uproarious laughter, the other with tipsy solemnity—were making futile attempts to wrest it from his possession. The table was strewn with letters and papers.
No sooner did this same hirsute Bursch perceive Geiger-Hans than he abandoned both sword and can and, staggering to his feet, opened wide his arms.
"Welcome, brother—master—friend!" exclaimed he, dithyrambically.
"Salve!" then cried the laughing student, pounced upon the abandoned can and buried his impertinent sandy face in its depths. Whereupon the melancholy third, whose long black hair fell about a cadaverous countenance, sank into his chair.
"Vilis est hominis natura," lamented he; then suddenly broke into the vernacular and shook his fist at the drinker: "Thou rag!"
"Salve, fratres!" responded the fiddler, by no means surprised, it seemed, at his reception, but neatly avoiding the threatened embrace. "How beautiful it is," he went on, "thus to see the saviours of their country at work upon her interests, even when the rest of the world sleeps!" He pointed to the letters as he spoke.
An inflamed but exceedingly alert eye was here fixed upon Steven over the rim of the can.