feeling that his
own uneventful affairs could have no interest for anybody, was
less communicative. And, indeed, while shunning the appearance
of inquisitiveness, he was far too eager to get hold of his new
acquaintance to think of volunteering much himself. Here to him was this
citizen of the new country who all his life had lived in the palace of
art, and that in no dilettante fashion, but with set aim and serious
purpose. And Falbe abounded in such topics; he knew the singers and
the musicians of the world, and, which was much more than that, he was
himself of them; humble, no doubt, in circumstances and achievement as
yet, but clearly to Michael of the blood royal of artistry. That was
the essential thing about him as regards his relations with his
fellow-traveller, though, when next morning the spires of Cologne and
the swift river of his Fatherland came into sight, he burst out into a
sort of rhapsody of patriotism that mockingly covered a great sincerity.

"Ah! beloved land!" he cried. "Soil of heaven and of divine harmony!
Hail to thee! Hail to thee! Rhine, Rhine deep and true and steadfast."
. . . And he waved his hat and sang the greeting of Brunnhilde. Then he
turned laughingly to Michael.

"I am sufficiently English to know how ridiculous that must seem to
you," he said, "for I love England also, and the passengers on the boat
would merely think me mad if I apostrophised the cliffs of Dover and
the mud of the English roads. But here I am a German again, and I would
willingly kiss the soil. You English--we English, I may say, for I am as
much English as German--I believe have got the same feeling somewhere in
our hearts, but we lock it up and hide it away. Pray God I shall never
have to choose to which nation I belong, though for that matter there in
no choice in it at all, for I am certainly a German subject. Guten Tag,
Koln; let us instantly have our coffee. There is no coffee like German
coffee, though the French coffee is undeniably pleasanter to the mere
superficial palate. But it doesn't touch the heart, as everything German
touches my heart when I come back to the Fatherland."

He chattered on in tremendous high spirits.

"And to think that to-night we shall sleep in true German beds," he
said. "I allow that the duvet is not so convenient as blankets, and that
there is a watershed always up the middle of your bed, so that during
the night your person descends to one side while the duvet rolls
down