seated around you the way we are seated here, dressed as I am, and of similarly alluring exterior, so that I in a manner of speaking would exist ninefold, and that they all were regarding you with love-lorn eyes, and were desiring to possess you with great strength of feeling. Can you do that?" The three lovers ceased for a moment to chew their dried prunes, and made an attempt to follow the maiden's flight of fancy, their faces meanwhile assuming a peculiarly sheep-like cast. But after a while the Suabian, as the greatest thinker and inventor amongst them, seemed to grasp the idea, and said with a voluptuous grin: "Well, most beloved Miss Zues, if you have no objection, I should indeed like to see you hover around here not only threefold but a hundredfold, and to have you look at me with lovelorn eyes and to offer me a thousand kisses!" "Nay, nay," Zues replied, rather put out by this, "do not talk in this unbecoming and extravagant style! What is entering your head, you overbold Dietrich? Not a hundredfold and not offering kisses, but only threefold and in a virtuous and honorable manner, so that no wrong may be done me!" "Yes," now cried Jobst, brandishing a pear stalk and gesturing with it, "only threefold and behaving with the greatest chastity do I see the beloved Miss Buenzlin walking about me and greeting me while placing her hand on her heart. Your most devoted servant, thank you, thank you!" he said, smiling with great urbanity and bowing thrice in different directions as though he really perceived these hallucinations in the air around him. "Thus you should speak," rejoined Zues, with a seductive smirk. "If there really exists any difference between you three, it is you, after all, dear Jobst, who are the most gifted, or at least the most sensible." Fridolin, the Bavarian, had not yet succeeded in conjuring up in his slower brain all these figments of imagination. But now seeing Jobst evidently scoring a hit, he was afraid that he was losing in favor, and so shouted in haste: "I also notice the lovely virgin, Miss Zues Buenzlin, perambulating right here in my vicinity and throwing voluptuous glances in my direction, while putting her hand on--" "Fie, you Bavarian," shrieked Zues wrathfully, turning her face aside out of very shame. "Not another word! Where do you get the courage from to talk to me in such a tone of impure grossness, and to allow your fancy to indulge in such smuttiness? Fie, fie!" The poor Bavarian felt abashed, reddened under this reproof, and looked about foolishly, not knowing what he had done amiss. For really his imagination had not been at work at all, and he had merely meant to repeat about what he had heard Jobst say a moment before and what the latter had been praised for. But now Zues once more turned and remarked: "And you, dear Dietrich, have you not yet been able to reshape that last observation of yours in a more modest guise?"