e evidently considered it a
condensed but complete answer.

"Imitation?" repeated August, timidly, not understanding.

"Of course! Lies, falsehoods, fabrications!" said the princess in pink
shoes, very vivaciously. "They only _pretend_ to be what we are! They
never wake up: how can they? No imitation ever had any soul in it
yet."

"Oh!" said August, humbly, not even sure that he understood entirely
yet. He looked at Hirschvogel: surely it had a royal soul within it:
would it not wake up and speak? Oh dear! how he longed to hear the
voice of his fire-king! And he began to forget that he stood by a lady
who sat upon a pedestal of gold-and-white china, with the year 1746
cut on it, and the Meissen mark.

"What will you be when you are a man?" said the little lady, sharply,
for her black eyes were quick though her red lips were smiling. "Will
you work for the _Konigliche Porcellan-Manufactur_, like my great dead
Kandler?"

"I have never thought," said August, stammering; "at least--that is--I
do wish--I do hope to be a painter, as was Master Augustin Hirschvogel
at Nuernberg."

"Bravo!" said all the real _bric-a-brac_ in one breath, and the two
Italian rapiers left off fighting to cry, "_Benone_!" For there is not
a bit of true _bric-a-brac_ in all Europe that does not know the names
of the mighty masters.

August felt quite pleased to have won so much applause, and grew as
red as the lady's shoes with bashful contentment.

"I knew all the Hirschvogel, from old Veit downwards," said a fat
_gres de Flandre_ beer-jug: "I myself was made at Nuernberg." And he
bowed to the great stove very politely, taking off his own silver
hat--I mean lid--with a courtly sweep that he could scarcely have
learned from burgomasters. The stove, however, was silent, and a
sickening suspicion (for what is such heart-break as a suspicion of
what we love?) came through the mind of August: _Was Hirschvogel only
imitation_?

"No, no, no, no!" he said to himself, stoutly: though Hirschvogel
never stirred, never spoke, yet would he keep all faith in it! After
all their happy years together, after all the nights of warmth and joy
he owed it, should he doubt his own friend and hero, whose gilt lion's
feet he had kissed in his babyhood? "No, no, no, no!" he said, again,
with so much emphasis that the Lady of Meissen looked sharply again at
him.

"No," she said, with pretty disdain; "no, believe me, they may
'pretend' forever. They can never