"Have you been regularly baptized? Was your father? Was your grandfather? Unless you can answer these simplest of questions and prove them, you could not get a license; and no priest or preacher would dare marry you without a license."
"Hang you, who's talking about getting married? All I want to know is, who is Hildegarde von Heideloff, and how am I to return her purse? I shall ask the blacksmith."
"Do so,"—taking up my egg-spoon.
Max slipped the purse into his breast-pocket and sat down.
VII
"The one fault I have to find with European life is the poor quality of tobacco used."
It was eight o'clock, Thursday night, the night of the dinner at Müller's. I was dressing when Max entered, with a miserable cheroot between his teeth.
"They say," he went on, "that in Russia they drink the finest tea in the world, simply because it is brought overland and not by sea. Unfortunately, tobacco—we Americans recognize no leaf as tobacco unless it comes from Cuba—has to cross the sea, and is, in some unaccountable manner, weakened in the transit. There are worse cigars in Germany than in France, and I wouldn't have believed it possible, if I had not gone to the trouble of proving it. Fine country! For a week I've been trying to smoke the German quality of the weed, as a preventive, but I see I must give it up on account of my throat. My boy, I have news for you,"—tossing the cheroot into the grate.
"Fire away," said I, struggling with a collar.