Professor Rubek.
All the same, they are no mere portrait[portrait]-busts, I assure you.
Maia.
What are they, then?
Professor Rubek.
There is something equivocal, something cryptic, lurking in and behind these busts—a secret something, that the people themselves cannot see——
Maia.
Indeed?
Professor Rubek.
[Decisively.] I alone can see it. And it amuses me unspeakably.—On the surface I give them the “striking likeness,” as they call it, that they all stand and gape at in astonishment—[Lowers his voice]—but at bottom they are all respectable, pompous horse-faces, and self-opinionated donkey-muzzles, and lop-eared, low-browed dog-skulls, and fatted swine-snouts—and sometimes dull, brutal bull-fronts as well——