"Only do not pour away the child with the bath," cried Baron Fuchs. "Johannisberger is a delicious wine, even although the dove of Patmos does not fly around Johannisberg, and his revelations have always become fatal to the German people--pale messengers of death, like the riders in the Apocalypse!" "If we talk of biblical wines," cried Kuhl, "then I prefer the '_Lachrimæ Christi_.' It grows on fire-belching Vesuvius, and the future of nations only flourishes upon the volcanic ground of revolution." "Heaven preserve us from revolutions!" cried the Landrath. "As regards Johannisberger," said Fuchs, as he drank off his glass with gusto, "we will grant ample acknowledgment to our host's exquisite wine. But Prince Metternich may remind us of Goethe's verse-- 'Ein echter deutscher Mann mag keinen Franzmann leiden Doch seine Weine trinkt er gern!'" "Drink, gentlemen, drink!" Wegen continually repeated his invitation, as he hastened from chair to chair. "Best of Barons, of what use are your beautiful speeches--your glass is empty! Herr Milbe of Kuhlwangen, _tournez_, _tournez_, Johannisberger is trump! Dear Doctor Kuhl do not think of '_Lachrimæ Christi_' and the people's tears; taste this glorious flower of the reaction!" Wegen did not need to urge Oberamtmann Werner, he had already done good work, and his neighbour, Sengen, listened, with sleepy resignation to the hymns in praise of sheep-breeding, which the best wool-producer in East Prussia sang in a voice becoming more and more maudlin. "Two things we must have here--a National Assembly and better wool. A National Diet and wool market--those are the two vital arteries in political as in agricultural life. There is no truly free people without wool! The fine kinds, that is the principal matter. In what are we in advance of the Australians? We have no kangaroos, but we have no superfine sheep either. And in Silesia; do you see, Silesia is bestirring itself also; the States are bestirring themselves; there is intelligence in the province. The Breslau wool market proves that. I am a good patriot, yes I am," continued he, in a voice stifled with tears, "but if a man will be useful to his Fatherland, it does not merely depend upon how he votes, it does not merely depend upon the speeches that are made, it also depends upon the wool that is shorn. You understand me, Sengen, oh, we understand one another, brotherly heart!" Sengen could only make his assent known by an animated shake of the head; for he, too, was so moved that his halting speech had become one great pause. "The National Assembly would have a much better chance," said Hermann, in a loud, ringing voice, "if the Königsberg Jews did not also desire to have them." "But, dear Hermann," said Kuhl, appeasingly, "the Promised Land they will never obtain, so that surely they must desire something else for themselves."