Just think, to-day at the dinner-table we had to drink wine--suddenly, to drink wine! Wine! For years and years the city-water in decanters has been our only table drink ... absolutely the only one. Dear children, said my husband.--You know that he had just returned from an eleven or twelve day trip to Alsace. Let us drink, my husband said, the health of my good and faithful Mrs. John, because ... he cried out in his beautiful voice ... because she is a visible proof of the fact that the cry of a mother heart is not indifferent to our Lord.--And so we drank your health, clinking our glasses! Well, and here I'm bringing you at my husband's special ... at his very special and particular order ... an apparatus for the sterilisation of milk.--Walburga, you may unpack the boiler. _HASSENREUTER enters unceremoniously through the outer door which has stood ajar. He wears a top-hat, spring overcoat, carries a silver-headed cane, in a word, is gotten up in his somewhat shabby meek-day outfit. He speaks hastily and almost without pauses._ HASSENREUTER [_Wiping the sweat from his forehead._] Berlin is hot, ladies and gentlemen, hot! And the cholera is as near as St. Petersburg! Now you've complained to my pupils, Spitta and Kaeferstein, Mrs. John, that your little one doesn't seem to gain in weight. Now, of course, it's one of the symptoms of the general decadence of our age that the majority of mothers are either--unwilling to nurse their offspring or incapable of it. But you've already lost one child on account of diarrhoea, Mrs. John. No, there's no help for it: we must call a spade a spade. And so, in order that you do not meet with the same misfortune over again, or fall into the hands of old women whose advice is usually quite deadly for an infant--in order that these things may not happen, I say, I have caused my wife to bring you this apparatus. I've brought up all my--children, Walburga included, by the help of such an apparatus ...Aha! So one gets a glimpse of you again, Mr. John! Bravo! The emperor needs soldiers, and you needed a representative of your race! So I congratulate you with all my heart. [_He shakes JOHN'S hand vigorously._ MRS. HASSENREUTER [_Leaning over the infant._] How much ... how much did he weigh at birth? MRS. JOHN He weighed exactly eight pounds and ten grams. HASSENREUTER [_With noisy joviality._] Ha, ha, ha! A vigorous product, I must say! Eight pounds and ten grams of good healthy, German national flesh! MRS. HASSENREUTER Look at his eyes! And his little nose! His father over again! Why, the little fellow is really, really, the very image of you, Mr. John. HASSENREUTER I trust that you will have the boy received into the communion of the Christian Church. MRS. JOHN [_With happy impressiveness._] Oh, he'll be christened properly, right in the parochial church at the font by a clergyman. HASSENREUTER Right! And what are his baptismal names to be? MRS. JOHN