(With a little more to the same effect.) This song pleased everyone beyond measure, but none so much as Master Martin, whose eyes beamed with joy and delight. Without attending to Herr Vollrad--who spake more than was necessary concerning that "manner" of "Herr Müller's" which the journeyman had "hit off by no means badly"--Master Martin rose, and, lifting his glass on high, cried: "Come here--thou--proper cooper and fine master-singer--come here! with me--with thy master--shalt thou empty this glass!"
Reinhold had to do as he was told. As he came back to his seat he whispered to the thoughtful Friedrich, "You must sing now, what you snug last night."
"You are mad," Friedrich cried, in anger. But Reinhold spoke out to the company, in a loud voice, saying:--
"Honourable gentlemen and masters, my dear brother Friedrich here knows much more beautiful songs and has a far finer voice than I. But the dust of the journey has got into his throat, so that he will sing to you in all 'manners' on another occasion."
Then they all begun praising and applauding Friedrich as if he had actually sung, and some of the masters even thought his voice was finer than Reinhold's. Herr Vollrad (after another glass) thought, and said, that Friedrich caught the beautiful German "modes" even better than Reinhold, who had just a little too much of the Italian school about him. But Master Martin threw his head back, smote his breast with his fist till it resounded again, and cried--
"Those are my men--mine, I say! Master Tobias Martin, the Cooper of Nürnberg's men."
And all the masters nodded their heads, and said, as they savoured the last drops out of their tall drinking-glasses--
"Aye, aye, it is so! All right! Master Martin's, the Cooper of Nürnberg's fine, clever men."
At last they all went home to bed; and Master Martin gave each of his new journeymen a nice bright chamber in his house.