"I am forced to acknowledge, madame," I heard Herr Plätner saying, in answer to one of Mrs. Farringdon's leading questions, "I am forced to acknowledge that my theories destroy much of the poetry of life. It is a most prosaic attitude that I am forced to hold toward yonder most beautiful baby, for example. Romance would point to him as an immortal soul in embryo. Realism asserts that he is a machine, like the rest of us, with a longer lease of activity before him than you or I have, who have been ticking, so to speak, for several years."
"Be good, Horatio!" I whispered. "Don't cry. You can have an ice pretty soon."
The baby brought his spoon down upon the table with a thump, and actually glared at the German professor, while my guests laughed gaily at the child's precocious demonstration.
"Isn't he cunning!" exclaimed Elinor Scarsdale, delightedly.
"He seems to have a prejudice against me, _nicht wahr_?" remarked the Herr Doctor, laughing aloud.
"You aren't to blame for that, little boy," murmured Dr. Hopkins, so that I alone could hear him. "He says that you are sprung from oil and lather and are rushing toward annihilation."
"'Ba-ba, ba-ba, black sheep, have 'oo any wool?' quoted Professor Rogers, the noted comparative philologist, who has identified the germ of epic poetry in the earliest known cradle songs.
"Isn't he fascinating!" cried Elinor Scarsdale, referring to the baby, not to the philologist.
"If you'll excuse me for a time," I said to my guests, seeing that Tom was growing weary of Horatio's prominence at the table, "I'll take the baby to the nursery."
"You'll do it at your peril," I heard a deep voice grumble, and Dr. Hopkins jumped nervously and glanced at me in amazement.
"Don't run off with him, Mrs. Minturn," cried Mrs. Farringdon; and her protest was sustained by a chorus of "don't" and "do let him stay."
"It may be only temporary," I heard Dr. Plätner saying, as he gazed at Professor Shanks, who had asked him, evidently, a question about the baby's nurse. "It's not an uncommon form of insanity, and may be only temporary. I recall an instance of a very learned and perfectly harmless professor at Göttingen who believed for years that his pet cat talked Sanskrit to him. There was at my own university a young man wholly sane, apparently, who made a record of conversations that he had held with the skeleton of a gorilla. Both of these men were eventually restored to mental health, and have never had a return of their delusions. It is fortunate, however, that the poor woman, whose insanity we have so recently witnessed, exhibited her mania at this time. What might have happened otherwise to that charming little baby I shudder to think."
