"We have coffee at six o'clock, and drink a few glasses of beer when we meet at the tavern."
"And do all the Ammergau people live so?"
"All. No one wants anything different."
"Even your Christ?"
"Oh, he fares worse than we, he is unmarried and has no one to care for him."
"What a life, dear Countess, what a life!" the duchess, murmured in French.
"But you have a piano in your house. If you are able to get such an instrument, you ought to afford better food," said Her Excellency.
The blacksmith smiled, "If we had had better food, we should not have been able to buy the piano. We saved it from our stomachs."
"That is the true Ammergau spirit," said the countess earnestly. "They will starve to secure a piano. Every endeavor is toward the ideal and the intellectual, for which they are willing to make any personal sacrifice. I have never seen such people."
"Nor have I. It seems as if the Passion Play gave them all a special consecration," answered the duchess.