"But, my dear Mrs. Clemens," squeaked Doctor Kubel, "do you really think those parts are quite suitable for our new friends at their first debut?" "Why not, dear doctor?" asks the manager, with a frown of impatience. "I only think they will hardly like it particularly to make their first appearance among us as murderers," says Doctor Kubel. The lady manager, whose brow has become darker and darker as her jocose guest speaks, is about to reply, but is prevented from doing so, for the door opens at that moment in order to admit Mr. and Mrs. Professor (ex-pastor) Jager into the room. The noble pair have not left the "lowly roof" and the "country fields" behind them without a change which might possibly escape the careless observer, but which the sharper eye would at once discern in many a characteristic symptom. Professor Jager knows but too well the use which the mask of humility, of modesty, and unpretending simplicity has rendered Pastor Jager, to lay it aside now when he has barely reached half of his ambitious end. He has only aired it a little, and he who has eyes to see, can at times very clearly discern underneath, his true face, marked with the double impress of the scholar's conceit and the priest's pride. Mrs. Jager affords the same sight, only translated into childish and foolish words. The author of the "Cornflowers" has the air of a person who expects every moment an effusion of overwhelming praise, and is quite determined to deprecate it. If the appearance of the professor reminds one of the well-known wolf in sheep's clothes, and one cannot very well feel quite safe in his neighborhood, his wife's appearance recalls the familiar crow, who thought herself Juno's own bird, and it requires an effort to remain serious. The change in the outward appearance is less perceptible; the interpreter of Chrysophilos has exchanged his plain glasses in horn for a pair of gold spectacles, and Primula wears in her golden hair a few artistic imitations of those blue flowers that have furnished her with a title for her poems. Both hold in their hands a copy of Wallenstein, full of joyous anticipations, hoping to carry off the honors of the evening by their masterly declamation, and without the most remote suspicion of the mortal insult which is to be inflicted upon their pride during the next ten minutes.