"Come, then, li'l nobs, let's go to Monaco." "Yes, but you must have your confinement in France, for Monaco is an independent state." "Agreed," said Macarée. On the morrow the baron des Ygrées and the baroness, all swollen by mosquito bites, took tickets at the station for Monaco. In the coach they laid charming plans. VI. GAMBRINUS The baron and the baroness des Ygrées in taking tickets for Monaco had thought to arrive at the station which is the fifth on the way from Italy to France and the second in the little principality of Monaco. The name of Monaco is properly the Italian name of this principality, although it is widely used nowadays in French, the French terms _Mourgues_ and _Monéghe_ having fallen into desuetude. However the Italians call Monaco, not only the principality which bears that name but also the capital of Bavaria which the French call Munich. The messenger accordingly gave the baron tickets for Monaco-Munich instead of Monaco-principality. Before the baron and the baroness had noticed their error they were already at the Swiss frontier, and after having recovered from their astonishment, they decided to finish the voyage to Munich in order to see at close hand all that the anti-artistic spirit of modern Germany could conceive of ugliness in architecture, sculpture, painting and the decorative arts... * * * The cold winds of March made the couple shiver in this stone-box Athens. "Beer," the baron des Ygrées had said, "is excellent for women who are enceinte." And so he led his wife to the royal brewery of Pschorr, to the Augustinerbräu, to the Münchnerkindl and other great breweries. They penetrated to the Nockerberg where there is a great garden. They drank there, as long as it held out, the famous March beer, _Salvator_, and it didn't last very long, for the Munich people are great drunkards. * * * When the baron and his wife entered the garden they found it thronged with a mob of drinkers, who were already under-the-weather and sang head to head and danced dizzily, breaking all the empty steins. Peddlers sold roast fowl, grilled herrings, pretzels, rolls, sausages, sweets, souvenirs, post-cards. And there was also Hans Irlbeck, the King of Drinkers. Since Perkeo, the midget drunkard of the great cask of Heidelberg, no such boozer had ever been seen. At the time of the March beer, and in May, Bock-time, Hans Irlbeck drank his forty quarts of beer a day. Ordinarily he did not have occasion to drink more than twenty-five.