"The old man," she said gravely--almost solemnly--in her deep voice, and with her foreign accent, "told me that you, sir, did not come till the best part of my dance was done; and so I ought not to take anything from you." Thus speaking she made Euchar a pretty courtesy, and went to the little man, taking the guitar from his hands, and going with him to a table at some distance.
When Euchar looked round him, he perceived Ludwig sitting not far off, between two respectable townsfolk, with a great glass of beer before him, making the most earnest signs. Euchar went to him, saying, with a laugh, "Why, Ludwig, when did you take to drinking beer?" Ludwig, however, made signals to him, and said, in meaning accents, "What do you say? Beer is one of the most delicious of drinks, and I delight in it above all things--when it is so magnificent as it is here."
The citizens rose, and Ludwig shook hands with them most politely, putting on a look which was half-pleased, half-annoyed, when they expressed at parting their regret for his mishap.
"You are always getting me into hot water with your want of tact," he said. "If I hadn't allowed myself to be treated to a glass of beer, if I hadn't managed to gulp the abominable trash down--those sturdy counter-jumpers would probably have been offended, and would have looked upon me as one of the profane. Then you must needs come and bring me into discredit, when I had been playing my part so very nicely."
"Well," said Euchar, "if you had been bowed out of their company, or even come in for a little touch of cudgelling, wouldn't it all have been a part of the mutual interdependence of things? But just listen as I tell you what a charming little drama your trip over the tree-root (predestined, according to the conditions of the Macrocosmus, to occur) gave me an opportunity of seeing."
And he told him about the charming egg dance by the Spanish girl. "Mignon!" cried Ludwig enthusiastically. "Heavenly, divine Mignon!"
The guitarist was sitting not far off, at a table, counting the receipts, and the girl was standing beside him, squeezing an orange into a glass of water. Presently the old man put the money together, and nodded to the girl with eyes sparkling with gladness, whilst she handed him the orange-water, and stroked his wrinkled cheeks. He gave a disagreeable, cackling laugh, and gulped down the liquid with every indication of thirst. The girl sat down and began tinkling on the guitar. "Oh Mignon!" cried Ludwig again. "Heavenly, divine Mignon! Ah, I shall rescue her, like another Wilhelm Meister, from the thraldom of this accursed miscreant who holds her in bondage!" "How do you know," asked Euchar, "that this little hunchback is an accursed miscreant?" "Cold creature!" answered Ludwig. "Cold, passionless creature, you understand nothing, you have no sympathy with anything, no sense of the genial, the imaginative. Don't you see--don't you comprehend how every description of the most insulting contempt, envious feeling, wickedness, ill-temper, and avarice of the vilest kind gleam out of the green, cat's-eyes of that little gypsy abortion--are legible in every wrinkle of his diabolical-looking face? Yes! I am going to rescue that beautiful child out of the clutches--the Satanic clutches--of that brown monster! If I could only have a talk with her, the little charmer!" "Nothing is easier than that," said Euchar, and he signed to her to come near.
The girl put the instrument down, came near, and made a reverence, casting her eyes modestly on the ground. "Mignon!" cried Ludwig. "Mignon! Sweet, beautiful creature!"
"I am called Emanuela," she said.
"And that horrible ruffian there," Ludwig went on, "where did he steal you from? How did you get into his clutches, poor thing?"