"Of course the latter, my brave Knight of La Mancha. Here, Oswald--nobody hears us in these halls, sacred to friendship and love--fill your glass and drink! Drink it to the last drop of silvery foam! Her health!--the health of the only one, the sweet, the fair, the beautiful one, with the blueish-black hair and the dark sea-deep eyes! Drink! I say, by the bones of the eleven thousand virgins at Cologne! Drink! How, noble Don, are you ashamed to confess the lady of your overflowing heart? and to deny her before me--me, the wise Merlin, who can hear the grass grow and the eyes sigh? Have I not heard the sighing of your beautiful eyes in those sunny days which are no more, when you and she, two children of a rare kind, played innocently under the rose-bushes and thought that no one saw you, not even the Creator of heaven and earth who gave you the warm breath with which you playfully whispered to each other the sweet mysteries of love? And did I not hear how serpents' tongues hissed around you? Did I not see with what intense hatred basilisk eyes glared at you? Oh, I have seen and heard all that, and I knew before that it would come thus, but I said nothing; for speech is silver, but silence is gold, and he who meddles with love affairs would do better to go and sit down in a bed of nettles." "Tell me, Timm, have you--have you seen her since she has come to Grunwald?" "I have seen her, my master!--not once, but many times, by the side of other fair beauties, among whom she looked like the rose of Sharon amid dandelions, gliding over the pavement of Grunwald, through dismal streets; and the paving-stones in the streets and the bricks in the houses received speech, and they spoke and sang: Blessed art thou among women!" "She is at Miss Bear's house, is she not?" Oswald asked, who thought it would be folly to try and conceal his attachment from a man of such sharp observation as Albert. "Yes, she is at the She Bear's--this pearl of an argus-eyed female. There she dwells, and sits at the window and sees the clouds drift over the tops of the poplars; and if you pass by there at noon, between twelve and one, you can see her sit there yourself, as I have seen her every time I have passed there at that hour. And always she raised her beautiful eyes, and always she looked at me inquiringly: Can you bring me no news of him--of him, the only man I love dearly? Why, Oswald, I--a prosy old fogy--I speak in verses whenever I think of the maid; and you, who are a poet, mean to deny that you love her with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind? Fie upon you; you do not deserve that I take so much trouble about you--that I have thought of you these last weeks more frequently than you have done during the whole time. But ingratitude is the reward of the world, and--Carole, another bottle!--I shall hereafter not trouble myself about you and your fate any further."