"Yes, I have drunk too much," cried Berger, gesticulating violently with his hands--"too much of the wretched beverage of this miserable life, which is utterly good for nothing, and the liquor has gotten into my head. Ha! ha! ha!"
It was a terrible laughter; but the half-drunk visitors thought it highly amusing.
"Oh, ho! the professor is taking to it very kindly," cried Mr. Schmenckel, holding his sides. "Speech, speech! Let the professor give us a speech!"
Oswald had jumped up and stood by Berger's side. He tried in his anxiety to calm the over-excited man, and to persuade him to leave the house.
Berger paid no attention to him. He stood there, leaning with both his hands upon the table, as Oswald had seen him do so often in his lecture-room.
"Write, gentlemen," he said, "this is the quintessence of the long syllogism, the parts of which I have just explained to you:
"I climbed on a pear-tree,
I wanted to dig beets,
Then have I all my life
Eaten no better plums.
"You will say that this is not a speculative idea, but an old drinking song; but, gentlemen, in a world where good people are made fun of, and led by the nose by impudent demons--where folly with the fool's cap on the head is ruling supreme, and causes its lofty conceptions to be executed by stupidity, vulgarity, and brutality--there speculation becomes a drinking song, and the idea--the grand, all-sublime idea--why, you are the idea yourselves, gentlemen, rough, vulgar fellows as you are."
"Oh, ho! old man, I won't stand that," cried Mr. Schmenckel, who could hardly laugh any longer.
"Yes indeed, yourself," continued Berger, growing more and more violent. "You, Director Caspar Schmenckel, of Vienna, you represent the justice of heaven! The idea can do nothing without you; you are the idea, the incarnate idea. I told you life was good for nothing, but no--that is saying too much--it is worthy of you. I detest you, but I honor you; I shudder at the sight of you, but I worship you. Come into my arms, that I may measure the depths of this wretchedness, that I may touch with my own hands the incredible."