"This is the method that I have discovered of hanging the devil up in the chimney," he said; "and I assure you it affords me holy joy when I do it." He stuck the half-smoked cigar in the holder, and smoked with all the strength of his lungs. "There's one thing that I don't understand," said Leo, who now tried to enter into the joke in earnest. "If you have got the devil so entirely in your power, why haven't you made him black all over?" The old man laid his finger on his nose with a worldly-wise air. "You speak like an ignorant sinner. Think what a poor creature the devil would be if he couldn't get some concessions from me and you! Just as I am hard at it, robbing him of all his power, he understands how to awaken my pity. This is the devil's peculiarity. He attacks us through our soft places. This, you see, was so smooth and fair and white. Well, I simply felt as if I couldn't. So, you see, I entered into a compact with him, which was just to smoke a stocking on to him, and to leave the rest as it was by wrapping it up in wool. And now do you see, Fritzchen, that is our whole art. We can't render him powerless, but we can put socks on him, and hide the rest." And as carefully as he had taken off the wrappings, he began to adjust them again on the part that was not discoloured. "Good gracious!" ejaculated Leo. "This is symbolism with a vengeance. It reminds me of the second part of 'Faust.'" "Don't talk of 'Faust' to me, Fritzchen. Goethe lived like an old heathen, and wrote like an old heathen. When he scanned his verse, he played with his five fingers on the piano and wasn't a bit inspired. Francke and Pusckin composed some fine and stirring verse; but they didn't do it in that fashion. And it is to be hoped the time is long passed when Schleiermacher and the whole lot of liberal divines were allowed to quote Goethe in the pulpit, as if he were one of the fathers of the Church. Besides, he was generally wrong. The eternal feminine draws us upwards, he says somewhere. A very fine noble sentiment, but there is another kind of feminine, equally eternal, that drags us down, Fritzchen, till we don't know at last whether there can be another slough for us to sink into. Many have the genius that helps them to get out of it, but many a one sticks fast and the bog closes over him." Leo felt his blood rise hotly to his cheeks, for the eyes opposite were hurling at him their most ominous darts. He refilled the glasses. The old man gulped down his wine hastily, and the bushy brows began to twitch. It was a sign that he had reached the stage when his original tirades were at their height. The late baron's "round table," at which he had sat as jester, had always greeted this signal with roars of laughter. Leo expected to find out now his old friend's most private and true opinion of his own position.