"And how do you feel, Mr. Barnyard Cock?" asked Sperber's nephew, raising his glass. "Here's to you!"
"To you!" said Herr Kosch, bowing very low toward him and trying to fix a somewhat unsteady gaze upon him. It seemed that in this firmly organized body of his the eyes were not altogether obedient. "Barnyard cock? Barnyard cock? Sir, I come from shimmering depths, from the caverns under the earth. You think the earth ends there where you walk? You think there is nothing moving under your feet. But the mole and the rabbit burrow deep--very deep. Well, well, I'm not a barnyard ... barnyard cock--that I'm not ... certainly not." And he shook his hard, lined hand. "No ... no!"
"The fellow's drunk," muttered Herr Sperber. He no longer held caressingly encircled the clear liquor in his glass, but looked at his old friend's daughter, and saw how, pale and with big, wide-open eyes, she watched anxiously every movement of the stranger. Old Sperber rose, came quietly behind her chair, touched her on the shoulder, and said, "I'll soon get rid of the fool for you--don't worry, Tubby." In reply he got from her a glance full of rebellion, and yet uncertain, as if seeking for help. "Listen, child, come with me through the garden," he said, cheerfully and heartily. She shook her head, and her eyes fastened again on the engraver.
"A man," the latter was just saying to his neighbor, Sperber's nephew, "in whom one notices by his walk or his bearing or his speech, even to the slightest degree, that he has taken too much of a good thing--is a degenerate! In man there is a whole world at war. The microcosm is in revolution! Storms are raging in the brain--the world is on fire! He stands unmoved, a god in revolt! What is your opinion? That is the highest self-conquest, the primeval type of manhood, the struggle and victory without a parallel!"
"Well, drinking too deep can happen to a fellow ... I don't say no," said the nephew very quietly. "But your way of putting it strikes me as very grand."
"Oho ...!" The engraver stretched himself, disengaged himself, so to speak, from his own ego, and looked challengingly down the table. His eye fell upon the beautiful girl who had given him her heart. He was aware of her deadly pallor, of her eyes fixed desperately upon him. "God help me--that sweet soul!" he said within himself. "There isn't half an ounce of strength and sap in a woman like that. Wash me, but don't make me wet! She wants a man with spirit, but she can't bear to see the bottling. Ah, there ...!" He pulled himself together and remained quite silent.
The young hostess rose now, and with her the guests. The last half hour at the rustic table under the trees, the air had been a little heavy. Many an eye had seemed to see old Rauchfuss go by and stop to shake the engraver's hand mysteriously, as though to say that he spoke after his own heart, and much more forcibly than he had ever been able to do.
The engraver now approached his hostess and said in a rather thick voice, "To judge the living and the dead. In heaven's name, then, good night. Tomorrow I go." She looked at him with eyes full of the deadliest anxiety, but spoke not a word, holding him only with her eyes. He was silent and gazed straight in front of him. It was evident that he was making a great struggle, internally and externally, to control himself. "I am who I am," he said. "There is no interpretation to that. What has grown so," and he held out his sinewy hands before him, "has grown so. Farewell ... But oh, your kisses--your royal kisses! God keep you!"
"Stay," she said, "stay!" But her features grew even paler, she tottered, and her head sank against the tree-trunk. Herr Kosch caught her in his arms. The candles on the table in their glass shades threw a yellow light on them.
Herr Sperber and some of the others saw the girl resting in the stranger's arms.