The pickled sturgeon with mushrooms and cucumbers, to which Madame’s tirewoman discreetly restricted herself, proved a mere whet to the gross Baron’s huge appetite. Half a ham and the greater moiety of a pasty of eggs and capons, hurled to the ravening wolf concealed behind his dingy shirt-bosom, left him with a niche quite available for tartlets, and a chink remaining for cream-cheese.
He said at length, piling a block of this delicacy on a rusk, bolting the mouthful, and sending a generous draught of the strong red wine hissing on the heels of it:
“Now, having fed, I may say my Nunc Dimittis. After such a meal”—he produced and proceeded to use a battered silver toothpick—“I feel myself the equal of Prince, Regent, or Archbishop, I care not which!”
A clean-shaven, fresh-faced, gray-haired citizen, clad in a long-tailed coat and buckled knee-breeches of speckless gray-blue broadcloth, with a starched and snowy shirt-frill jutting from his bosom and rasping his triple chin, looked up from his dish of fricasseed eggs at this boast of von Steyregg’s and said, a trifle sourly:
“The late Prince, sir, being with the departed, presumably has done with eating and drinking, although our Regent, being of the Lutheran persuasion, is at liberty to feed as freely upon the Vigil of the Assumption, as upon all other prescribed fasting-days.... But of his Lordship, the Archbishop, I dare to say that like any other respectable religious, he is, with his clergy, in strict retreat at this moment; and if anything beyond pulse—or dry bread and water—have passed his lips to-day, I will undertake to eat this book of mine!”
He indicated, amidst some tokens of amusement manifested by other abstainers at the table, a Missal that was propped up against the cruet at his side; then wiped his lips, threw off a glass of water, whisked the napkin-end from the bosom of his spotless waistcoat, and beckoned the waiter, asking what was to pay? The man named fifty pfennigs, the client threw down a mark and asked for change. But before the base metal could be transferred from apron-pouch to pocket, von Steyregg, completely deserted by his guardian Angel, tipped the wink to Köhler—who was diligently cramming plum-pie with whipped cream—and rose up, stretching out an immense protesting, mottled hand. His tear hung in his eye, his strawberry nose and flabby mouth quivered with emotion:
“Take up that coin, sir, I beg of you! Nothing is to pay, for you, or any other citizen of Widinitz who occupies a chair at this board together with my companion and myself on this auspicious day. You have told me that your Prince is no more; I say to you that, being dead, he cries from the tomb—‘Resurgam!’ For in an heir of his blood and name he shall live again; the youthful phœnix but waits the signal to emerge full-fledged from the parental pyre of flaming spices.... What? Do you doubt! O! man of tepid faith, I will prove it you! His Serene Highness is, at this moment, with Her Excellency, deigning to partake of refreshment in the private room overhead!”
“Wie? Was?” ejaculated the tradesman, staring at von Steyregg with bulging eyes, as the big fist banged the table, and the cutlery and glasses danced about, while the fifty pfennigs change leaped from the plate held by the startled servitor, and ran into a corner and hid as cleverly as little coins can. “Ach so!” the astonished man added, bringing down his eyebrows with some difficulty. “What you tell us is very surprising, if it be true!”
“And all tales are not true!” put in the oracular barber, who had been polishing off a plate of pickled sturgeon; while von Steyregg held forth.
“Decidedly,” added a bookbinder, who was lingering over a bowl of cabbage-soup and black bread, “one is wise not to believe everything one hears.”