'He says, could a set of men whose passions were not perverted by unnatural stimuli--that's coffee, of course--gaze with coolness on an _auto-da-fè_?' 'I engage to gaze with heat on any _auto-da-fè_ I may encounter if only you will quickly--' 'He says--' 'Put down the book, Rose-Marie, and see to the getting of coffee.' 'But he says--' 'Let him say it, and see to the coffee.' 'He says, is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings rising from his meal of roots--' '_Gott, Gott_,--meal of roots!' '--would take delight in sports of blood?' 'Enough. I am not in the temper for Shelley.' 'But you quite loved him a day or two ago.' 'Except food, nobody loves anything--anything at all--while his stomach is empty.' 'I don't think that's very pretty, Papachen.' 'But it is a great truth. Remember it if you should marry. Shape your conduct by its light. Three times every day, Rose-Marie,--that is, before breakfast, before dinner, and before supper,--no husband loves any wife. She may be as beautiful as the stars, as wise as Pallas-Athene, as cultured as Goethe, as entertaining as a circus, as affectionate as you please--he cares nothing for her. She exists not. Go, my child, and prepare the coffee, and let the bread-and-butter be cut thick.' Well, since then I have been cutting bread-and-butter and pouring out cups of coffee. I thought Papa would never leave off. If that is the effect of a vegetarian dinner I don't think it can really be less expensive than meat. Papa ate half a pound of butter, which is sixty pfennings, and for sixty pfennings I could have bought him a _Kalbsschnitzel_ so big that it would have lasted, under treatment, two days. I must go for a walk and think it out. Yours sincerely, ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. XXXVI Galgenberg, July 21st.