"You have a dangerous cook," says Elsa.
"But I understand this Kotschubey, do you know," continues Papa Harfink. "Since I have had this cook, I really have to go to Marienbad twice every year. And besides, he is a splendid fellow, talks politics like a deputy. He formerly served only with the highest nobility. I took him with the castle from Count Sylvani. A peculiar fellow--this Galatin; will not stay away from the swans and the park. A poetic creature; do you know, Baroness, he reads Victor Hugo and the Medisations of Lamartine."
"Ah really, the Medisations of Lamartine," says Elsa, smiling. Susanna Harfink rushes to the assistance of her distressed husband. "Ha! ha! ha!" says she, with her shrill laugh. "My husband always calls meditations medisations--very malicious, do you not think so, but a good joke."
Papa Harfink, sadly conscious that it always means a curtain lecture when his wife before people laughs so energetically at one of his "jokes," of which he feels innocent, with much grace and melancholia licks his knife on both sides.
His wife looks as if she were weary of pulling the lion-skin again and again over the long ears.
The moment has arrived when he is to speak his toast. He rises hesitatingly, the glass trembles in his hand. Fear and champagne have made him lose the last recollection of the few words prepared by his wife.
"This is a great day for me--a day of pride and pain--no, that is not it!" thoughtfully raising his hand to his upper lip. "I hope that my brother-in-law, no, my son-in-law--Su--su--sanna!" he murmurs, helplessly. His cheeks seem to inflate, his eyes grow smaller and more shining, he has set down his glass, and twists his napkin like a conscientious washerwoman. Susanna rises, she is fairly Roman. "As my husband, overcome with emotion, cannot speak," she begins. "I will say, this is for----" for a moment she hesitates, then for the first time in her life, she resolutely denies her husband, emancipates herself from the "us" with which for long years she has protected him, and says: "This is for me a day of pain and of joy. I lose a daughter, gain a son; may my children always find the highest happiness in each other, and a safe retreat in their parental home."
"He is getting a dreadful mother-in-law, this Lanzberg," whispers Eugene Rhoeden to his neighbor, a gay, more than audacious brunette. "Something between a Roman matron and a quarrelsome landlady from a bachelor boarding-house."
The tasteful Raimund contributes a toast to the fusion of nobleman and citizen. The older Rhoeden hopes that his beautiful cousin will lend a new charm to the noble name of Lanzberg.
Much similar follows.