She gave a deep sigh. "Oh, how fond he is of talking about Italy!" she thought. Yet she wouldn't have gone anywhere else for the world.
They pursued their way for five or six minutes along the dark bank of the canal, talking nonsense. Now the medley of lights on the Potsdamer Bridge were quite near, and he stopped before a small dimly lit window in which were displayed a dozen or so of wine-bottles wreathed with green cotton vine-leaves, looking like heads of asparagus popping out of the sand.
"Here Signore Battistini will serve us with a Chianti as good as any to be had in Florence," he declared.
They went in, and threaded their way through a small front room where the proprietor, black as the devil himself, was pasting on labels behind the bar. He was greeted with "Sera, padrone" by Lilly's new friend. They passed into a long room full of rough tables and chairs. The only attempt at decoration were garlands cut out of green glazed paper, which were evidently ambitious of being taken for vines. They twined round the bare gas-brackets and cascaded over hooks on the wall, and in order that there should be no mistake as to what was the origin of all these festive tokens, a placard hung from the middle, wishing all who entered--at the end of March--a belated "Prosit Neujahr."
"How do you like this fairy-garden?" Lilly's friend asked her, as the waiter, black as his master, with eyes like fiery Catherine-wheels, beseechingly held out his hands for her cloak.
At the tables round them sat bushy-haired youths, who rolled long, thin cigars between their teeth, and nearly thrust their knuckles in each other's eyes as they gabbled Italian with fascinating rapidity.
"They are marble-cutters," Dr. Rennschmidt said sotto voce, "employed by our leading sculptors. They earn a lot of money, and when they have saved enough go home to start housekeeping."
Among them were two ladies. They wore their black lustreless hair so low on their foreheads that their eyes resembled torches burning out of a dark forest. They had gold rings in their ears, and their low-cut dresses were clasped by barbaric brooches. They glanced up at Lilly's tall figure with envious admiration, and then began an animated conversation in whispers.
Dr. Rennschmidt bowed to them cordially, with an air that seemed to say he had nothing to conceal and nothing to confess. He told her that they were mandoline singers belonging to a troupe of Neapolitans, whose manager had thrown them over, and they were now in search of an engagement.
"Where am I?" Lilly thought.