"Ah! I see you are a connoisseur."
"At best only an amateur. I have seen a good deal in the capital and elsewhere, but mostly only casts. It has been from boyhood up my most ardent wish to make a pilgrimage to Italy, in order to be able to worship at the feet of the great god Apollo Belvedere."
"Well, that is a very reasonable wish."
"Not so very reasonable, after all, if it is reasonable only to wish what we can attain."
"Then it would be unreasonable to wish for some refreshments now, as that does not seem attainable," said Melitta, in a playfully complaining tone. "But do we not often obtain something from Fate, merely because we wish for it most ardently, almost impertinently? Fate grants us our wish, as a mother often does the piece of cake to the importunate child, only to get rid of us."
"Fate is no capricious lady, but a hard, stony-hearted god, and if we want anything of him we must be firm."
"That may be so with you men, and perhaps it is well it should be so, else you would be too overbearing. But we women--what on earth would become of us if we had to be firm like that when we want a little happiness? We rather go to work and beg and pray, and when we are just about to give up all hope and to despair of all happiness--why, just then--you see, there comes Baumann, and with him a prospect that we may get some refreshments."
The door opened, and the form of a tall, thin man appeared on the threshold. He had quite a martial air with his old wrinkled face and bushy eyebrows; a deep scar ran across the bald forehead, past the left eye, and down the whole cheek, and his mouth was shaded by a heavy iron-gray mustache.
"Madam," he said, in a voice which seemed to rise from a deep cavern.
"Ah, Baumann, is everybody out?"