Mr. Schmenckel, who had not the remotest idea of what could have become of the two gypsies, but who considered it wrong to destroy all hope of meeting the last object of his mad fancy in the heart of a man who was immensely rich and passionately fond of young gypsy-children, winked cunningly with his swollen eyes, put his fat finger against his nose, and said: "Are not far from here, in the woods--have certain information--can get her when I want her--don't want her, though--women must have time to get over their tantrums--then they come of their own account, and are thoroughly cured of their fancies. Yes, you have to know them well! Women are troublesome people to deal with, only they are all alike--and yet not one is like the other. What do you think about that, old boy?"
"I think you a great philosopher, from whom one might learn a great deal yet," replied Berger, looking with a curious smile into Mr. Schmenckel's face.
"Well, I should think so," said the director, throwing out his capacious chest and resting his hands on his hips. "Mr. Schmenckel, of Vienna, knows where the hare burrows, and the man who wants to lead him astray has to rise early in the morning. But, by all the Powers! it is no wonder after all if I know rather better than others how the world wags; I have been shaken about in it, upside and down, round and round and round, like a cork in an empty bottle."
"An empty bottle," said Berger. "That's a capital comparison; perfectly correct. How did you get hold of that?"
"How I got hold of it?" replied the director with an air of astonishment. "How I got hold of it? Probably, because I have an empty glass standing before me. Ha, ha, ha."
"It looks as if you had not been displeased, so far, with the beverage of life," said Berger, while Mr. Schmenckel made use of the interval, till the new glass of beer could come, to fill his short clay pipe.
"Well, and why not?" replied the director, lighting his pipe at the flame of the tallow candle that stood near him on the table, and disappearing for a few moments from the sight of the by-standers in thick, blue clouds. "Life is a prodigiously funny thing for a man who knows what's what, like Caspar Schmenckel, of Vienna. Thanks, my angel!"
"I am not your angel, sir," said the girl, snappishly, as she pushed back violently the arm with which Mr. Schmenckel had embraced her waist, and cast a stolen glance at Oswald.
Mr. Schmenckel's only reply to this insulting correction was this: he pressed the five finger-tips of his right hand against his thick lips and cast a kiss after the girl as she slipped out, and then, closing his left eye, winked cunningly with the other at Oswald, who was sitting on the opposite side.
"Nice girl, your excellency, isn't she? Pretends to eat me up alive, and is head over ears in love with me."