"What?" shouted Leo. "You despise my best wine? What fad is this?"
"Nothing, nothing," muttered the old clergyman, and pushed the glass nervously away from him to the other side of the table. "In my present condition, I should outrage my body and outrage the wine if I drank it."
"Condition!" jeered Leo. "And what sort of condition do you suppose that I am in? Have you ever seen a wild boar run to earth in a swamp, quenching its thirst with foul water, when the hounds have almost begun to tear it to pieces? Well, that is the condition in which I am drinking here. But I am going to drink another for all that. To your health, old man!"
The pastor regarded him with a disconcerted expression, then silently raised the glass, emptied it, and gave himself a shake.
"Isn't it nice?" laughed Leo. "You and I sitting and drinking here amiably together, cheek by jowl. We ought to be happy and sing that good old song, 'Sublime and sacred, brothers, is the hour which unites us here again,'" and he sang the couplet. "Or perhaps you would prefer some more obscene chorus? I am ready for any dare-devilry."
He tossed down two more glasses of the iced wine, feeling as he did so how his imagination began to go mad. All sorts of pictures shot up before his eyes, and disappeared again directly he tried to retain them.
The old man, who had been brooding gloomily with his chin on his breast and a fixed glare in his eyes, raised himself slowly with his hands grasping the edge of the table, and struggled with the unpronounced words which half strangled him.
"Do you know why I have come?" he asked a second time.
"I think that I may safely hazard a guess," laughed Leo. "It was my unpleasant duty, this evening, to give your young hopeful a drubbing which he won't forget in a hurry. Come, here's to his health. Long may your son and heir flourish!"
"Look here, Fritzchen," said the pastor, "this is mocking and jeering at a poor parent whom anxiety has driven out into the night. I call it low of you, Fritzchen. I couldn't have believed you capable of it, knowing what your character used to be. But I'll describe to you the state of things at home, and then, perhaps, you will be stirred to a little human pity. We were sitting at supper, my wife and the children and I, when the boy rushed in, as white as a sheet and his lips running with blood. He fell on the ground and clutched at my knees. 'For God's sake, tell me what has happened, my son!' said I. And he cried out, 'Father, father, kill me! Kill me--I am disgraced, dishonoured; all decent men will kick and spurn me like a mangy cur in future.' Then I dragged him into my study and said, 'Tell me all, lad.' And so I learnt what had passed. Fritzchen, why have you disgraced my own flesh and blood? How have I sinned against you that you should have done this thing?"