CHAPTER V THE WIRTH’S THEORY In the evening, while they dined, the landlord came in to see how they fared, and wish them good appetite: ’tis the custom with distinguished guests in the Tyrol. The moment he entered, Florian, all agog, attacked him at once on the subject of their wonderful find that afternoon on the hillside. “Well, Herr Hausberger,” he cried in his high-flown way, “we’ve seen and heard your Linnet—heard her warbling her native wood-notes wild, to the tune of her own cow-bells on her lonely mountains. Now, what do you mean, sir, by turning out a divine singer like that—I’m a musical critic myself, and I know what I’m talking about—what do you mean by turning her out to make butter and cheese in a solitary hut on an Alpine pasture? It’s sheer desecration, I tell you—sheer wicked desecration; there’s nothing, almost, that girl couldn’t do with her voice. She’s a genius—a prodigy; she ought to be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day on champagne and turtle. And _you_, sir—you send her up to herd cows all alone, in an inclement clime, on a barren hill-top!” Andreas Hausberger gazed at him with a self-contained smile that was extremely characteristic. He bowed a sarcastic bow which Florian misinterpreted for polite subservience. “Are _you_ running this show or am I?” he asked, after a fresh pause, with a quaint reminiscence of his Western experience. “_You_ are, undoubtedly,” Florian answered, taken aback at this unexpected assault. “But you ought to run it, all the same, on rational and humane and intelligent principles. You owe this girl’s voice, as a delight and a treasure, to US, the enlightened and critical connoisseurs of two eager continents. Nature produced it that _we_ might enjoy it. It was intended to give us some of those exquisite moments of artistic pleasure which are the sole excuse creative caprice can plead for the manifold defects of the Universe.”