But she always passed without noticing him; nor did she sit down by Jansen again. It was easy to see that her mind was fixed upon something which took her thoughts away from all that was going on about her. As it struck midnight, it so chanced that there was a momentary hush in the conversation. The æsthetical professor advanced into the middle of the _salon_, holding a full glass in his hand, and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to propose a toast to our honored mistress, in whose name we are here assembled. I do not mean by this the gracious lady, so sincerely honored by us all, whose guests we are. I have praised her too often not to be willing to resign, for once, to her younger guests this privilege of an old friend. My toast is offered to a mistress even greater than she--to the sublime art of Music, the art of arts, whose supremacy is becoming more and more acknowledged and exalted, without envy by her sisters. May she, the mightiest of all the powers which move the world--thrice glorious and thrice holy Music--live, flourish, and prevail to the end of time!" Enthusiastic applause followed these words, but even the clinking of the glasses, and the shouts of the different voices, were drowned by a loud flourish which a young musician improvised upon the piano. The professor, who had emptied his bumper at a draught and instantly filled it again, now stepped, with a complacent smile, into the cabinet where Jansen sat, thoughtfully holding his half-filled glass, from which he had scarcely sipped, as if he were counting the rising pearls within it. "My honored master," he heard a voice say at his side, "we have not yet touched glasses with one another." He quietly looked up at the speaker. "Do you care very much to have your resolution passed by a strictly unanimous vote?" "My resolution?" "I mean your exaltation of music above all other arts. If it was merely a polite phrase to catch the applause of the musicians and the devotees of music, I have nothing to say against it. It is always expedient to howl with the wolves. But in case you expressed your real opinion, and ask me now, on my conscience and between ourselves, whether I share it, you must permit me to draw back my glass in silence, and, if I drink, to think my own thoughts in so doing." "Do what you can't help doing, _carissimo_!" replied the professor, with a thoughtful nod of the head. "I know very well that you worship other gods, and only esteem you the more for having the true artist's courage to be one-sided. To your health!" Jansen held his glass in the same position, and did not seem in the least inclined to approach it to that of the professor. "I am very sorry to sink in your estimation," he said, "but I am really not quite so one-sided as you think. I not only love music, but it is fairly necessary to my existence; and if I am deprived of it for any length of time, my spirit is as ill as my body would be if it were forced to go without its bath."