For it greatly puzzled him why, when some of the bric-a-brac was all full of life and motion, some was quite still and had not a single thrill in it. "My dear child," said the powdered lady, "is it possible that you do not know the reason? Why, those silent, dull things are IMITATION!" This she said with so much decision that she 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 Nurnberg." "Bravo!" said all the real bric-a-brac in one breath, and the two Italian rapiers left off fighting to cry, "Begone!" 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 Hirschvogels, from old Veit downwards," said a fat gres de Flandre beer jug; "I myself was made at Nurnberg." 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 heartbreak 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 look like us! They imitate even our marks, but never can they look like the real thing, never can they chassent de race."