The tailor made believe not to have heard this interested remark, and ended his speech with the question, “What do you think of that idea?”
“Bravo, bravo!” cried all; and “You’re a sharp lad; you’re a clever fellow,” added the chairman of the meeting, as he passed his hand complacently over the head whose portrait was shortly to be sent to the Chancellor of the German Empire.
“We haven’t done yet,” continued Holzert; “we have still to find out how we’re going to put your head on the stamps,—with a beard, with a moustache only, or without anything at all.”
“Why, you do think of everything, tailor!” observed Marbaise.
Bauer declared that there could be no two opinions on the point—“With a moustache, that’s quite military,” and, as he spoke, he twisted the ends of his own.
“But I don’t think it would look very well—a red moustache,” objected Marbaise.
“Why, what does that matter? You can’t see it in the picture,” returned Conrads. “Bismarck has a white one.”
“I don’t quite know whether you’re right,” began Holzert again; “just look at Napoleon,—I mean the great Napoleon,—he’s got nothing, no beard and no moustache, and yet he sent the Prussians to the right-about, time and again; but what do you think about it yourself, Bloemstein?”
“Well, what am I to say to you? A beard is not respectable, and I shall have mine shaved off; then we can see if the moustache alone looks well; and if that is not the case, I’ll have that taken off too.”
All thought this an excellent idea.