“A musical motif?” murmured Jason Philip, to whom the very term music conveyed the idea of something unpleasant.
“Yes, but you have got to understand it,” said Herr Carovius rather jauntily. With that he seized the ear of a small boy who had ventured right up to his trousers’ legs; the boy screamed.
After casting an angry look at the monument, Jason Philip broke out in sudden and hearty laughter. “Now I understand,” he stammered as he coughed, “you are a fox, a sly old dodger.”
“What do you mean, gentlemen?” asked the apothecary, who had become somewhat anxious, for he feared that this outburst of hilarity was directed at him.
“Why, don’t you see? Don’t you understand?” panted Jason Philip with a scarlet red face, “the two geese—? The musical motif and the two geese—? Isn’t it clear yet?”
It was clear to Herr Carovius. He stuck the index finger of his right hand in the air, and broke out in a neighing sort of laughter. Then he took the apothecary by the arm, and in the pauses between salvos of laughter he bleated: “Magnificent!—Under each arm a goose!—Priceless! Say, Herr Schimmelweis, that was good. We will allow you one on that.”
The connection was now clear to the apothecary. He slapped himself on his hips and cried: “As sure as there is a devil, that’s the best joke I ever heard in my life.”
Jason Philip Schimmelweis again got control of himself. He pressed his hands to his stomach and said breathlessly: “Who would have thought that the Goose Man moves about among us in bodily form?”
“Yes, who would have thought it?” said Herr Carovius as if conceding a point. “It is a capital shot, a real discovery. We come to the simple conclusion: Goose Man! And we are capable of drawing a conclusion, for there are three of us. According to an old proverb, Tres faciunt collegium.”
“And they,” stuttered Jason Philip, pointing to the group, as tears of laughter trickled down over his pudgy cheeks, “they are three, too. See, there are three of them!”