“True, perfectly true,” replied Allertssohn, whom his friends called “Allerts.” “Very true! Temper oh! temper! You don’t suspect, Herr Wilhelm—But we’ll let it pass.”
“No, speak, Meister.”
“You’ll think no better of me, if I do.”
“Then let us talk of something else.”
“No, Wilhelm. I needn’t be ashamed, no one will take me for a coward.”
The musician laughed, exclaiming: “You a coward! How many Spaniards has your Brescian sword killed?”
“Wounded, wounded, sir, far oftener than killed,” replied the other. “If the devil challenges me I shall ask: Foils, sir, or Spanish swords? But there’s one person I do fear, and that’s my best and at the same time my worst friend, a Netherlander, like yourself, the man who rides here beside you. Yes, when rage seizes upon me, when my beard begins to tremble, my small share of sense flies away as fast as your doves when you let them go. You don’t know me, Wilhelm.”
“Don’t I? How often must one see you in command and visit you in the fencing-room?”
“Pooh, pooh—there I’m as quiet as the water in yonder ditch—but when anything goes against the grain, when—how shall I explain it to you, without similes?”
“Go on.”