"Deep bells began to ring, and yet another devil appeared. He was very small with a big head and wore a sailor's beard under his chin. He had no red-feathered cap on his head like the other devils, but a soft velvet toque.
"'You have not treated me as I deserved,' he said solemnly. 'I had made so much fuss about my works that four-fifths of the world mistook me for a real composer. You have made of my sublime music dramas a means of propaganda, of Pan-German propaganda. And you have done worse. You have accepted that rubbish by Richard Strauss as equal to my own immortal work. Some call him Richard the Second, and some Strauss the Second; Second he may be, but never First. And you have abandoned my poor family when you refused to prolong the Copyright of my works, my poor wife who had been so heroically unfaithful to her husband for my sake, my poor son who in spite of my undeniable paternity has not the slightest musical talent. And further, you have allowed my Parsifal to be played everywhere, against my wish, and so revealed to the world its real value. Still, I will help you and show you at once the strength of my Parsifal and the real frightfulness, the one, the only one which will frighten the English.'
"Four young knights of Hell approached him carrying a glass jar. It was not filled with blood as you may believe, not with the holy blood of the Grail, but with the purest strawberry jam.
"'Uncover the jam!' said Wagner, acting the last scene of Parsifal and not noticing that the glass jar was not covered. He began to pray; little round rubies seemed to shine in the jam. And all the devils cried:
"'Oh marvel! Marvel of the highest frightfulness!'
"Then, as in Parsifal the white dove, a black crow this time descended and remained soaring above Wagner's head, who exclaimed triumphantly:
"'Hurrah! Hurrah! Monseigneur! All the strawberry jam of England is changed into plum jam—plum jam with stones to prove what it is!'
"I fainted. Then somebody threw water on my face, and I woke again."
"You must have had too much bacon for breakfast," says Cotton, "to judge from the rapidity of your dream. The chemical composition..."
"Rubbish!" interrupts Pringle, "but you will remember, Sergeant, that we were talking of Parsifal just before the action began."