Intermixed with Friedrich's take-off were his moments of "the grand manner," appropriate to a musical director who is born to command fickle or imperious singers and musicians. He was naturally an actor. His refreshing mimicries amused Gard. Against the bovine background of the Villa Elsa circle, he stood out in relief as an enlivening figure with flitting phases of elegance. He was clever, talented. He spun off a lot of new music at the piano, much of it coming from his own pen. Elsa hung absorbed over the wing of the instrument. Friedrich, of about Kirtley's age but adequately equipped and ambitious, was aspiring to some one of the dignified thrones in the musical kingdom of Germany. Gard was only just hatching out as a man. He was essentially but a lad grown up. Von Tielitz showed already a wholly developed maturity. German instruction again versus American education! Friedrich was better versed in English than the Bucher children. He paid two calls on Gard that first day. Talking Anglo-Saxon was good practice. On the second call he discharged a missile that struck Kirtley near the heart, and gave him a feeling of faintness. "Don't you like Elsa?" Von Tielitz whipped out with no preamble. "She is really a nice girl, a very nice girl. Her family thinks we are to marry. Well, perhaps. I don't know. Sometimes I think yes. Sometimes I think no. There are so many others, don't you know. But I think we will marry as soon as I get my Kapellmeistership. We are always such good friends. She used to sit on my lap before I went away. O! we are _very_ good friends. But now I am not so much in Dresden and, my dear Mr. Kirtley, my poor Kapellmeistership does not come along. It is most aggravating, as you say in English. I get so discouraged." He brightened again. "They tell me you and Elsa have been playing duos. Such good training. Very agreeable. We used to play together also. A nice girl to rub one's knees against under the piano--oh, "I am Titania the blond, Titania, of the air!" Friedrich twittered gayly the lines from "Mignon." Then he abruptly changed. "But I have now so little time for serious maidens. Ach Himmel! How I am driven by going here and going there! One says this to me, another says that to me, and my head gets all in a whirl." So he wandered on with his mixtures of _nonchalance_, condescension and, above all, his ebullient self-esteem that flowed over on to everyone to the point of deluging them. When he went away, it was with such a warm invitation to call upon him the next week that Kirtley could not but accept. Besides, here was opened up a novel and suggestive line of behavior from the standpoint of the German young man of the world.