"No, Habermann," cried Kurz, again, "if the clover seed has the right lustre, and looks so violet-blue, then----"
"Well, Kurz," said Habermann, "yours didn't look like that."
"My benefactor," said the rector again, to Bräsig. "Venus was, as I have said, a goddess, and as a sheep-dog----"
"Eh, what?" said Bräsig, "you must have imagined all that, about the goddess, Fenus means a sort of bird. Karl, don't you remember the stories we read, when we were children, about the bird Fenus?"
"Ah!" said the rector, as light dawned upon his mind, "you mean the bird Phœnix, which builds itself, in Arabia, a nest of costly spices----"
"That is an impossibility!" exclaimed Kurz. "How can the most skillful bird build a nest out of cloves, pepper-corns, cardamoms and nutmegs?"
"Dear brother-in-law, it is only a fable."
"Then the fable is a falsehood," said Bräsig, "but I don't think you pronounce the word rightly; it isn't Phœnix, it is Ponix, and they are not birds, they are little horses, and they don't come from Arabia, but from Sweden, and Oland, and I know them very well, for my gracious lady the countess had two Ponixes, which she used to drive for pleasure."
The rector wanted to set him right, but Kurz interrupted: "No, brother-in-law, let it go! We all know that you are better informed than Bräsig, in such learned matters."
"No," said Bräsig, "let him come on!" standing before the rector, as if he had no objections to a contest.