"Ah, dottore, dottore!" exclaimed the oyster-eater, rising at once and seizing the proffered hand. "You here? Well, that is a most sensible notion of our stupid friend's accident. Carole, a whole bottle instead of half a bottle, and several dozen oysters instead of one."
"Am I really at this moment a persona grata to you, Timm?" said Oswald, taking a seat by Albert's side.
"Persona grata! at this moment!" cried Albert Timm. "Don Oswaldo! Don Oswaldo! I have missed you sadly, upon my word, ever since we parted at Grenwitz, and I am as delighted as a snow-bird to see you here again. Where on earth have you been hiding all this time? I have inquired of everybody. Since when are you back?"
"Three hours ago."
"And, of course, you are hungry and thirsty, just as you were when you left the stage-coach; at least you look so. Carole, Carole! Why does the fellow not come? At last! Here, dottore, is food for a sound stomach, and drink for a sick heart! Here's your health! Welcome in Grunwald!"
And Mr. Timm's face smiled so kindly as he said these kind words that it would have looked like blackest ingratitude to doubt the sincerity of his sentiments.
Oswald at least was most pleasantly affected by this cordial reception of a man whose friendship he had never tried to win, whose amiable frankness he had often met with repulsive coldness, and he felt this all the more deeply as he had suffered a few moments before acutely from a sense of loneliness in the world.
"One service deserves another, Timm," he said, while the latter was filling the glasses again. "I can tell you that I am heartily glad to have met you the very first night I spend again in this town. Let us have another glass! Here's our good friendship!"
"With pleasure!" cried Mr. Timm, heartily grasping Oswald's proffered hand. "We will hold together honestly. Heaven knows this wretched old-fogy place does not have an abundance of men with whom one can hold together, or like to do it. But this league of two noble souls ought to be celebrated in a nobler beverage. Carole! A bottle of champagne--Clicquot and frappé--else, by the bones of my fathers, the lightning of my wrath falls upon your bald pate. And now come, dottore mio, tell us something of your wanderings; or, rather, tell us that some other time; and let me know, first of all, for that is most interesting to me, has Fame told us falsely in making a most wonderful mixture of great and small things of the last scenes of your farce, your drama, or your tragedy at Grenwitz?"
"Before I can answer that," said Oswald, whom the oysters, the wine, Timm's company, and the whole atmosphere, were gradually putting into better humor, "I must know what it is Fame has reported."