At first, a thoughtless, almost animal gladness in being together again, deprived them of speech. Their hearts were so full of each other, that they seemed to have nothing to say. Then at last Ulrich opened the conversation with a casual question. "Did you come by Hamburg?" Leo came and planted his six feet of massive height in front of his friend. "Yes. The day before yesterday I set foot on German soil, and went straightway to a restaurant to breakfast. I had a couple of congenial souls from Buenos Ayres with me. They and I went on breakfasting the whole day and night through, till it was time for breakfast again the next morning." At this he laughed, showing the whole of his magnificent set of teeth, and rolled his tongue with a clicking sound over his gums. He stood there, straddle-legged, with his hands in his pockets, in the flower of his broad-chested, full-blooded, manly strength. His thick, reddish-blond beard waved back in two semicircles over his firm rounded cheeks, which, like the short nose, might have been moulded in bronze, and then it mingled with the curly moustache in a riot of waving strands, shading from light to dark. The hair at the back of his head was cropped to the roots, and displayed the shape of the powerful skull, which was posed on the ruddy full neck like the copula of a dome. "And that reminds me," he continued, "that I have had nothing to eat since I left Hamburg. What does it mean? It isn't the way prodigal sons are generally treated. Shall I still have to go hunting for my meat in the saddle now I am in Europe?" And then he roared through the hollow of his hand. "Landlord! waiter! scullion!" till the walls shook from the echoes of his voice. The landlord, greasy and smiling, with two old-fashioned Prussian ringlets over his ears, appeared in the doorway. He expressed himself respectfully overjoyed to find that the Herr Baron had not lost his healthy voice in foreign countries. That was a sign the rest was in good condition. "In such good condition, my friend," replied Leo, "that if you venture again to criticise my voice, you will find yourself being chucked out of one of your own windows." The landlord, in alarm, begged pardon, and, promising to send up the best contents of his larder, retired with a servile bow. "To tell you the truth, old fellow," Leo said, turning to his friend, "I don't like your looks. You lay there like one crucified." Ulrich Kletzingk clenched his teeth, and raised himself into an erect position. "Thank you," he said, "I am quite revived now." "What about the heart? How are the attacks now? Who, I should like to know, has been rubbing your head for you all this time when the little white mice swarm?" Ulrich smiled, as we smile at children's talk which does our heart good to hear.