Frédérique was not at all the same woman as our hostess of a few moments earlier. After quite a long silence, during which our lovelorn Prussian continued to drown his heartache in champagne, I touched my neighbor's arm softly, saying: "You seem to be a long way off. Are you tired? do you wish us to go?" Frédérique raised her head, passed her hand across her forehead, and resumed her jovial air. "Ah! you are right!" she exclaimed; "scold me, my friend. I have fits of musing, sometimes; I fall into a train of thought that is utterly void of sense! It is very wrong in me, for when you are with me is no time for me to have such thoughts. But I don't want you to leave me yet; we get along so well together! Are you inclined to sleep?" "Oh! no, madame!" "_Madame_ again! You irritate me! Beware! if you go on in this way, I am no longer your comrade." "Pray don't say that--Frédérique." "He called me Frédérique! that's very lucky for him! What a lot of trouble I had, to bring him to that! Ah! I am very glad I succeeded." She sprang to her feet and began to waltz about the table; then stopped in front of a mirror over the mantel, and changed the arrangement of her hair once more, this time twisting a red silk handkerchief about her head, _à la_ Creole. Then she went to the baron, took him by the shoulders, and shook him, crying: "Well! my friend Brunzbrack, you don't open your mouth! Have you gone to sleep?" The baron raised his head, rubbed his eyes, and tried to open them, as he replied: "Ach! _zaperlotte!_ gone to shleep, me! ven ich bin mit ein so bretty voman! mit ein voman who turns mein head und mein heart!" "I don't know whether I have turned your head, but it seemed to me that you were hardly following the conversation." "Id vas te bibe vich haf make mein head heafy ein leedle pit. But I haf not seen! Mein Gott! how you pe bretty mit tis oder way to do your hair! I know not vy you like to blay all tese leedle dricks mit your head, als if id haf not peen bretty enough pevore!" "Herr von Brunzbrack is right," said I, looking at Frédérique, to whom the red silk handkerchief gave a saucy, wanton look that changed her completely. "Do you know, my friend, that it is ungenerous to keep changing your coiffure, and to invent such alluring ones? Do you want the poor baron here to die of love?" "Ha! ha! I'm not afraid of that. I have put on my nightcap; isn't a body at liberty to put on her nightcap? But I don't want you to go to sleep, baron! Come, let's sing and drink and laugh! Oh! I am in a laughing mood to-night!" "Ja! ja! let's trink und sing!" "Do you begin, baron; but no love songs, and, above all things, no languorous lamentations. What we want is something lively, a little décolleté even. Do men stand on ceremony with one another?"