in you such as I have wished for in vain at my own house,
when my severe little niece has led the old lion-hunter about by her
apron-string like a meek lamb."

Then he related how he had made the most charming acquaintances at the
club yesterday, and what a cordial tone he had found there.

"You South Germans are really a fine race of men!" he cried, excitedly.
"Everybody is so open, so true-hearted, in his _neglige_, just as God
made him. You don't have to feel about a long time until you get
through all the padding, and reach something like a human core; but
whatever there is in you appears on the surface, and, if it doesn't
please, it can't be helped. For that reason, of course, one sometimes
comes across a slight roughness, which, however, only does you honor."

Schnetz puckered his mouth to an ironical grimace.

"Allow me, _chere_ papa, to remark that you over-estimate us," he said,
dryly. "That which you take to be our honest, natural skin is only a
flesh-colored material under which the real epidermis lies concealed as
securely and as secretly as the nut under its shell. We do well to
throw aside our cloaks, because, with us, we do not show ourselves as
we are when we do so. Of course, between ourselves we know perfectly
well how matters stand, and that we can't make an X into a Y. Believe
me, were it not for the drop of Frankish blood that I got from my
mother, I should not be so _naif_ as to blurt out our national secret
to you. I would leave you to quietly find out for yourself whether, at
the end of a year--yes, or even at the end of ten or twenty years--you
would have advanced any further in the friendships made yesterday than
you did in the first hour; whether you would have succeeded even in
penetrating the padding and putting your hand upon a real human heart
of flesh and blood. I--much pains as I have taken--never succeeded in
doing this. It is true, I myself was so exceedingly ill-humored as to
consider it my duty to speak the truth to those whom I consider my
friends. But that is something one must guard against doing here as
carefully as against stealing silver spoons. Why has a man a back,
unless it is that his friends may abuse him behind it?"

"I know you, _mon vieux_," cried the baron. "When you haven't a pair of
shears and some black paper at hand, you cut your caricatures out of
the air with your sharp tongue. But I won't allow this jaundiced art of
yours to put me out of humor with this bea