Outside, they were swallowed up again in the roaring and surging human stream, and borne toward the city. The old countess drove past them in a very elegant open carriage, her daughter by her side, and her son and son-in-law on the back seat, both in uniform and decorated with medals of honor. The happy old woman, who was taking the fresh glories of her family out for a ride, and gazing around her with proud eyes, recognized Schnetz immediately, and nodded to him with amiable familiarity. She looked at his companion through her eye-glass, but did not appear to know him.
"Brave youngsters," muttered Schnetz. "Whatever else you may say of them, they certainly fought well. But now let's take a drosky. Of course, our young husband lives outside there where the last houses are."
As they drew up before Rossel's quarters--a plain little house in the Schwanthalerstrasse--they caught sight of a woman's head at the flower-framed window above; but it was instantly drawn in again.
"Madame is at home," said Schnetz, with a smile. "Of course, she has been expecting your visit, and has probably arrayed herself in great style. Hold on tight to your heart, triumphator!"
Upon arriving up-stairs, they were not received by the lady of the house herself, as he had expected, but by a servant-girl, who conducted them into the studio. In comparison with the luxuriously-furnished room in which their friend used to recline on his picturesque bear-skin in his own house, this one was very scantily decorated. There were no costly Gobelin tapestries, beautiful bronze vases, and brilliantly-polished pieces of furniture in the style of the Renaissance. But on some of the easels stood pictures in various stages of completion, and the artist himself advanced to meet them, in his shirt-sleeves and with his palette on his arm.
"So here you are again!" he cried. "Now thanks be to all the gods that you have come back with sound limbs and unscratched faces! You have a fine piece of work behind you. Nor have we stay-at-homes been lazy in the mean while; and though not fighting for emperor and empire, we can at least say of ourselves that we have been working pour le roi de Prusse. But it makes no odds, let us hope for better times; in the mean while I am trying to drive away the blues with this daubing. For Heaven's sake, don't look at the things; they are wretched efforts, merely made in order to try my brush again. For that matter, you mustn't look about you here at all--quantum mutatus ab illo! Of all my household goods, I have retained nothing but my Boecklin; a thing of that sort is like a tuning-fork when one has lost the key-note. Neither must you inspect me too closely. I am reduced, my dear fellows, very much reduced. You see I have shrunken to unnatural proportions; what has become of my rounded form? But, what could be expected when a man gets to work by eight o'clock every day, and so violates his holiest principles? But wait, I will go and call my wife. She is the thing best worth seeing in the whole house."
He made his friends sit down on a small leather sofa that bore little resemblance to the celebrated "West-easterly" divan of former days, and ran out calling for his wife. In the mean while, they had time to look around. So much that was excellent met their view on all the canvases--such clearness, and simplicity in form and color--that they were moved to sincere enthusiasm, and eagerly expressed their delight to one another.
"You are too good," Rossel's voice rang out behind them. "It is possibly true that, in the course of time, I have become a passably good colorist. It isn't for nothing that a man refrains from his own sins for ten years, and has no other thoughts than to get at the secrets of the great. But so long as no one cares a rap about it, it remains a barren, private delight, and finally withers like a plant in a cellar. Who cares, nowadays, whether human flesh like this looks fresh, or as if it had been tanned? The subject, the idea, and now, to cap the climax, the patriotic sentiment--no offense, my heroes! Even in that way we can drag ourselves out of the slough; of course, upon condition that we give that nixie there a petticoat, and provide that fisher-boy with a pair of swimming-trousers at the very least."
"Amid all these profound remarks we have wandered from the main point again," said Schnetz. "Where is your wife?"
"She asks to be excused--says she is engaged--and won't show herself at any price. I told her to her face it was only on account of the Herr Baron. 'Of course,' she answered, 'I wouldn't mind the first-lieutenant at all.' Oh, my dear friends, if I only were not so hen-pecked! But I can assure you, much as I have always raved about women without brains, I now see clearly that they are the very ones who know how to succeed in having their own way. However, in the present case, it has turned out to my advantage. For no matter how free from prejudices one may be, he can't help making a wry face when he sees his wife blush slightly in saying good-day to her first and only love. Won't you come and dine with me to-morrow? Little, but cordially offered--un piatto di maccheroni, una brava bistecca, un fiasco di vino sincero. I think the lady of the house will make her appearance too--"