"Well, well," she replied, "that is perhaps true. Yet in our little shop in the Rue de la Paix we do not always find that it is those with the heaviest money bags who pay us most generously for our flowers. I would sooner serve a bankrupt aristocrat than a wealthy shopkeeper. If they pay at all, these aristocrats, they pay well."
Henri stretched out his hands.
"Mademoiselle, there are shopkeepers who are also princes. My client of this evening is one of those. Behold, he comes! Pardon!"
The man for whom these great preparations had been made stood in the entrance of the restaurant, waiting for the woman who was giving her cloak to the vestiaire. He was tall and thin, dressed rather severely, with a black tie and short coat, a monocle which hung from his neck with a black ribbon. His face was unusually long, his eyes deep-set, his mouth set firm on a somewhat protuberant jaw, with lines at the corners which somehow suggested humor. When he saw Henri he nodded.
"Once more, Henri," he remarked, with a little smile, "once more in my beloved Paris!"
"Monsieur is always welcome," Henri declared, bowing to the ground.
"Paris is the gayer for his coming."
"You are indeed a nation of courtiers!" Herr Carl Freudenberg exclaimed. "What German Oberkellner would have thought of a speech like that to a Frenchman finding himself in Berlin! Ah! Henri, you try, all of you, to spoil me here. Is it not so, mademoiselle?" he added, turning with a bow and a smile to the girl who stood now by his side. "Henri here speaks honied words to me always. The wonder to me is that I am ever able to tear myself away from this city of fascination."
"If we could keep monsieur," the girl murmured, smiling at Henri, "I think that we should all be very well content."
Herr Freudenberg made a little grimace.
"But my toys!" he cried. "Who is there in Germany could make such toys as I and my factory people? The world would be sad indeed—the world of children, I mean—if my factory were to close down or my designers should lose their cunning."