He gave a short, hasty cough, and walked the room twice with his hands clasped at his back, and then, coming straight in front of me, said, “And your name? What's your name?”
“Potts! Potts!” said I, with a firm energy.
“Potztausend!” cried he, with a grim laugh: “what a strange name!”
“I said Potts, Herr Rittmeister, and not Potztausend,” rejoined I, haughtily.
“And I heard you,” said he; “it was involuntarily on my part to add the termination. And who are the Pottses? Are they noble?”
“Nothing of the kind,—respectable middle-class folk; some in trade, some clerks in mercantile houses, some holding small government employments, one, perhaps the chief of the family, an eminent apothecary!”
As if I had uttered the most irresistible joke, at this word he held his hands over his face and shook with laughter.
“Heilge Joseph!” cried he, at last, “this is too good! The Prince Max going out with an apothecary's nephew, or, maybe, his son!”
“His son upon this occasion,” said I, gravely.
He, did not reply for some minutes, and then, leaning over the back of a chair, and regarding me very fixedly, he said,—