This one is number four."
"I don't believe a word of it. It is impossible, upon its face. Is that boy there her brother?"
"No, that is her son. He is her youngest. He is not as old as he looked; he is only eleven and a half."
"These things are all manifestly impossible. This is a wretched business. It is a plain case: they simply took your measure, and concluded to fill you up. They seem to have succeeded. I am glad I am not in the mess; they may at least be charitable enough to think there ain't a pair of us. Are they going to stay here long?"
"No, they leave before noon."
"There is one man who is deeply grateful for that. How did you find out? You asked, I suppose?"
"No, along at first I inquired into their plans, in a general way, and they said they were going to be here a week, and make trips round about; but toward the end of the interview, when I said you and I would tour around with them with pleasure, and offered to bring you over and introduce you, they hesitated a little, and asked if you were from the same establishment that I was. I said you were, and then they said they had changed their mind and considered it necessary to start at once and visit a sick relative in Siberia."
"Ah, me, you struck the summit! You struck the loftiest altitude of stupidity that human effort has ever reached. You shall have a monument of jackasses' skulls as high as the Strasburg spire if you die before I do. They wanted to know I was from the same 'establishment' that you hailed from, did they? What did they mean by 'establishment'?"
"I don't know; it never occurred to me to ask."
"Well _I_ know. they meant an asylum--an IDIOT asylum, do you understand? So they DO think there's a pair of us, after all. Now what do you think of yourself?"
"Well, I don't know. I didn't know I was doing any harm; I didn't MEAN to do any harm. They were very nice people, and they seemed to like me."
Harris made some rude remarks and left for his bedroom-- to break some furniture, he said. He was a singularly irascible man; any little thing would disturb his temper.
I had been well scorched by the young woman, but no matter, I took it out on Harris. One should always "get even" in some way, else the sore place will go on hurting.
CHAPTER XXVI [The Nest of the Cuckoo-clock]
The Hofkirche is celebrated for its organ concerts. All summer long the tourists flock to that church about six o'clock in the evening, and pay their franc, and listen to the noise. They don't stay to hear all of it, but get up and tramp out over the sounding stone floor, meeting late comers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way. This tramping back and forth is kept up nearly all the time, and is accented by the continuous slamming of the door, and the coughing and barking and sneezing of the crowd. Meantime, the big organ is booming and crashing and thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is the biggest and best organ in Europe, and that a tight little box of a church is the most favorable place to average and appreciate its powers in. It is true, there were some soft and merciful passages occasionally, but the tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get fitful glimpses of them, so to speak. Then right away the organist would let go another avalanche.
The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir sort; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them. Millions of them. But they are libels upon him, every one of them. There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the copyist cannot get. Even the sun fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is wanting.