“Indeed, indeed,” sighed Manne and kissed her shoulders.
“Then you must see how one of our youngest Parisian painters has imagined me,” she laughed. “I made a little trip there a few weeks ago....”
All eyes turned upon Levy for a second. They knew that he also had been to Paris a few weeks ago. He looked quite unconcerned.
“The most modern art is like an unshelled chestnut,” he said. “Green and full of prickles.”
“I look like a starved green skeleton with mauve-coloured frost bites,” Laura interposed, eagerly, with her cheeks a little flushed.
“I told the great master that it was not kind of him to make me so angular. Then he bowed and said: ‘Art is free, Madame, and on this occasion it has not been able to take any notice of your roundness.’ Yes, that’s what he said. But come with me and look at the masterpiece for yourselves.”
With the whole troop of laughing men after her Laura ran through the yellow drawing room into her little reading and writing room where she had hung the curiosity. She opened the door quickly and almost stumbled over something that lay across the threshold.
It was Georg. He had crept out of bed to peep at the party through the keyhole and had fallen asleep at his post. He lay there dressed only in his outgrown nightshirt and with black streaks across his knees from his stockings. There was an air of sad neglect and helplessness over the whole emaciated little figure.
“Who the deuce is that kid?” laughed one of the men, who did not know that Laura had a child.
Laura grew rigid for a moment, but quickly recovered herself and assumed as well as she could the pose of the tender-hearted mother. She lifted up the boy, wrapped him up as decoratively as possible in her shawl, and kissed his cheek. And at this kiss from his mother Georg awoke in the midst of the glorious party. Still half asleep, he threw his arms round her neck and whispered something out of his dreams: “Mummie ... princess all the same.”