At the close the audience flocked to the speaker as if to an Olympian victor. Frau Bucher was ecstatic, covering him with her compliments while insisting on waiting for a propitious moment to introduce Herr Kirtley. But as Gard remained there at the lecturer's elbow, he met with another disillusion about German professors. This locally famous man, so correctly dressed to outward view, wore no shirt collar under his beard. His neck and ears showed no signs of recent ablutions and were bushy with unkempt hairs. And he exhaled a rank odor compounded of perspiration and dirt. Gard almost choked, being crowded into close contact. Could he ever get fully accustomed to German smells? It was most unpleasant, disenchanting. He could not, it appeared, find himself attracted to Teuton university expounders--those gods of wisdom who had repulsed him. Whether it was his unfortunate luck or not, he was not able to summon a desire to go again. He had not forgotten his other experience. It was a part of that something fundamentally, monumentally lacking in the German race--something shoddy, deceptive, which he had met with at so many turns. CHAPTER XXX VILLA ELSA OUTDOORS In the vernal season the lectures and theaters were dropped for neighborhood excursions of which the Buchers, like all German families, were extremely fond. A rendezvous would be made for dinner, for instance, at some attractive spot up the Elbe. It would be a walking trip from Loschwitz along the winding banks or up on a higher path stretching from one smooth, low-lying hilltop to another. Everywhere the invigorating odor of pine lay in the air. The company assembled by twos or singly at their convenience during the late afternoon. Generally the Herr would be last. And when he was spied approaching, with a cock's feather in his hat and supporting himself authoritatively on his big stick, a chorus of acclaim greeted him, for craving appetites were now to be satisfied. The household would pass the evening dining _al fresco_ and enjoying the landscape studded with historic and other enduring memories. Near by was Hosterwitz, where Weber composed "Oberon" and "Der Freischuetz." Often mists from the Elbe rose mystically to engarland the crenelated castles here and there on the heights. A drowsy river boat in that long agreeable northern twilight would finally gather up the family at the dock and drop them off at home. Sundays were the favorite time for these little outings. Lessons, classes, tasks, were then lightened. Gard had quickly become aware in Germany that the Sabbath is considerably a day of work as well as pleasure. The usual impression in America that the Germans are religious, not to speak of being moral, was dispelled. This had been a fragment of his erroneous idea that they are active Protestants in the sense that carries any Calvinistic or ethical meaning.