"I must begin now to take my very best meat to the Victoria, for Herr Sonnenkamp knows what is good."
A printer whom Eric recognized said, "Our editor, Professor Crutius, declares that he knows Herr Sonnenkamp, but he isn't willing to tell us anything about him."
Eric's interest was still further excited. The men went on to tell of the immense sum daily paid to the landlord of the Victoria, then of Sonnenkamp's reported purchase of the Rabenecke palace, and of his admission to the ranks of the nobility as being a thing as good as settled. Here some remarks were made, in too low a tone for Eric to catch, which raised a general laugh.
"I call you to witness," said a stout man whom Eric recognized as a flour-dealer and baker, "that I say now this Herr Sonnenkamp is sent on a secret mission. The young nobles in the South want an emperor, and this Herr Sonnenkamp's designs to aim higher, perhaps, than any of us imagine."
"Then you can go with him and be court-baker," said one, whose rejoinder was received with a burst of laughter.
"What's that to us?" said another; "the man brings plenty of money into the country. If a hundred of them came, I don't care what they are after, as long as they bring us their money."
The speaker was a short, round-bodied little man with a great meerschaum pipe. He emptied his covered glass as he spoke, and called out to the bar-maid,—
"Bring me a fresh one; I have deserved it, for I am the cleverest of the lot."
Eric slipped out of the room, glad not to have been recognized.
At the door he received a friendly greeting from a young man whom he had no recollection of having seen before, but who recognized him as one of the singers at the musical festival. He was a teacher in the scientific school in the capital, and announced to Eric that he had been proposed to the school-teachers' union as an honorary member.