But here is Baron Weissschnitzerdörfer, wearing a traveling cap, coming out of the dining car, where I imagine he has not spent his time consulting the time-table.
“The good man of the hat trick!” said Caterna, after the baron went back into the car without favoring us with a salute.
“He is quite German enough!” said Madame Caterna.
“And to think that Henry Heine called those people sentimental oaks!” I added.
“Then he could not have known that one!” said Caterna. “Oak, I admit, but sentimental— “
“Do you know why the baron has patronized the Grand Transasiatic?” I asked.
“To eat sauerkraut at Pekin!” said Caterna.
“Not at all. To rival Miss Nelly Bly. He is trying to get around the world in thirty-nine days.”
“Thirty-nine days!” exclaimed Gaterna. “You should say a hundred and thirty-nine!”
And in a voice like a husky clarinet the actor struck up the well-known air from the Cloches de Corneville: