"Where's our other glass?" said Edwin, looking around the room. "We really have another, Heinrich, and in a carouse of three tipplers----"
The flush on Balder's cheeks deepened, and he stooped as if he were searching for the missing glass on the floor.
"Of what consequence is the glass?" cried Mohr, who meantime had attacked the cake and now had his mouth full. "The liquor's the main thing, whether we drink it from the cask, the bottle, or a broken cup. My friends, let me tell you that this is the first pleasant hour, that spiteful quean, Fate, has bestowed upon me for the last three years. I'm glad to be once more among people who fare worse than they deserve. I know this is true of you and myself. As for our philanthropist, he at least shows a face that will dull the sharpest sting of envy. Upon my word, Franzel, you look as if things were going wrong. Has Delitzsch passed you to-day without lifting his hat? Did a dozen blood-thirsty millionaires spring from the earth during the last shower? Or were you called upon at the last workmen's meeting, instead of making fine speeches, to tear your breast like the pelican and let a fountain of real St. Julien gush forth, and did you fail to accomplish the trick?"
"I see I'm only in the way here," replied the printer, glancing at Mohr with an expression of indescribable contempt. "I'll not intrude any longer."
He nodded to Balder and walked hastily toward the door, but Edwin seized his hand and detained him.
"Stop!" said he. "We shall not let you go so, Mohr is incorrigible. But there's something the matter with you, Franzel, I see it in your face, and by our old friendship--"
The angry man compressed his lips still more firmly, and said after a long pause: "Why should I speak of it? Ruin takes its own course."
"Ruin?"
"Why yes, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, what does it matter? And we can only rejoice that it should proceed from this cause. It shows in the clearest manner to what our diseased form of government has come--and where it will arrive, if--supposing that--"
He paused again. The friends looked at each other inquiringly.