"I'm not quite so sure about that," the stranger said, laughing loudly; "we shall see!" And he ordered the waiter to bring a bottle of the oldest claret in the cellar.
"My good Mr. Privy Councillor," Tussmann began, deprecatingly. But the stranger interrupted him hastily, saying:
"Let us drop the 'titles,' Tussmann, for once and all! I am neither a Privy Councillor nor a Clerk of the Privy Council. What I am is an artist, a worker in the noble metals and the precious jewels; and my name is Leonhard."
"Oh, indeed!" Tussmann murmured to himself--"a goldsmith! a jeweller!" And he bethought himself that he might have seen at the first glance that the stranger could not possibly be an ordinary Privy Councillor, seeing that he had on an antique mantle, collar, and barret cap, such as Privy Councillors never went about in nowadays. Leonhard and Tussmann sat down at the same table with the old Jew, who received them with a grinning kind of smile.
When Tussmann, at Leonhard's instigation, had taken two or three glasses of the full-bodied wine, his pale cheeks began to glow, and as he swallowed the liquor, he glanced about him with smirks and smiles, as if the most delightful ideas were rising in his brain.
"And now," Leonhard said, "tell me openly and candidly, Mr. Tussmann, why you went on in such an extraordinary manner when the lady showed herself at the Tower-window; and what it is that your head is so very full of at the present moment. You and I are very old acquaintances, whether you believe it or not; and as to this old gentleman here, you need be on no ceremony with him."
"Oh, heavens!" answered the Privy Chancery Clerk--"Oh, good heavens! most respected Herr Professor--(I do beg you to allow me to address you by that title; I am sure you are a most celebrated artist, and quite in a position to be a professor in the Academy of Arts)--and so, most respected Herr Professor, how can I hide from you that I am, as the proverb puts it, 'walking on wooer's feet.' I am expecting to bring the happiest of brides home about the vernal equinox. Could it be otherwise than a rather startling thing, when you, most respected Herr Professor, were so very kind as to let me see a fortunate bride that is to be?"
"What!" the old Jew broke in, in a screaming voice--"What! are you thinking of marrying? Why, you're as old as the hills, and as ugly as a baboon into the bargain."
"Never mind him," Leonbard said; for Tussmann was so startled by what the old man said that he could not utter a syllable. "He means no harm, dear Mr. Tussmann, though you may think he seems to do so. I must say, candidly, that it seems to me, too, that it is a little too late in life for you to be thinking about such a thing. You must be well on to your fiftieth birthday; aren't you?"
"I shall be forty-eight," said Tussman, with a certain amount of irritability, "on the 9th of next October--St. Dionysius's day."