"My profound though superficial studies of physiognomy," replied Albert. "I have been an adept in that science from my boyhood, perhaps even a martyr, for my excessive zeal in pursuing that study often earned me a terrible whipping at school. Instead of listening attentively, I used to draw the cleverest caricatures of the sparrows, the monkeys, sheep, and other heads all around me; for I need not tell you that the best way to find out the character of a face or a figure is to try to caricature it. Now, if I bring out the melancholy feature in your face with special emphasis, it becomes the veritable face of a Grenwitz, sad, and yet irresistibly sensual,--the very face which a poor innocent maiden would lose her soul for. I will be hanged if you are not going to be the luckiest man alive, as far as women are concerned--unless you have been so already."
"And if I assure you of the contrary?"
"Then Baron Harald was not the rat-catcher of Hameln, but a night-watchman, and he did not die from his excessive fondness of wine and women, but from over-study; then little Marguerite--who is by the way a really charming girl, and not unnaturally reserved--told me a story when she said she hated you, which in our language means: I am desperately in love with him; then report has lied when it couples your name with that of another lady, fairer and of far higher pretensions than poor little Marguerite."
"What do you mean?" asked Oswald, feeling that the blood was rushing to his face.
"Nothing, mon prince, nothing," replied Albert, laughing; "is it absolutely necessary always to mean something when we say something? I was only to beat the bush to see if the birds would fly out. For one needs no glasses such as I have to wear, nor the knowledge of a Lavater, to see that the weather is not alone to be blamed for your melancholy. Whenever one of us is melancholy, a pair of black or blue eyes is invariably at the bottom of it. Now I do not ascribe it to Miss Marguerite's pretty black eyes, for I have seen the sovereign indifference with which you treat the poor child; so it must be another pair of eyes, and consequently, if that is so, these eyes must belong to somebody, and if that is so----"
"Enough, enough!" said Oswald, laughing at the merry jingling talk of his companion in spite of his melancholy state of mind; "you will presently prove that I am the man in the moon, and about to plunge head over heels into the great ether from love for a fair princess who lives on the star Sirius."
"Why not?" asked Albert "I am the wise Merlin; I know all the whims a man can have in his head; I hear a report, which I may have started myself, long before it comes near me, and I prophesy that if we do not reach some shelter before five minutes have passed, we shall be washed clean as we never were before."
The two men were on an open field between the forest and the tenants' cottages belonging to Grenwitz. Albert's prophecy seemed to be on the point of being fulfilled. The dark heavy masses sank lower and lower, so that it looked almost like night at the early afternoon hour; a few big drops came pattering down.
"Sauve qui peut," cried Albert. "What do you say, dottore, shall we have a little race to that cottage?"
"Well!" said Oswald.