“I have no objection,” replied the latter; “but I’d just like to say something too.”
“Councillor Holzert will now address the meeting.”
A sudden silence fell on the assembly; all were straining their ears to hear what thoughts had arisen in the tailor’s shrewd brain. Speaking slowly, and emphasising every word, he began,—
“We must have stamps made—big stamps, with your head on them, Bloemstein; and then we’ll send a letter, with a stamp like that on it, you understand, not to the Emperor of Prussia, but to Bismarck, because, after all, he’s the fellow that does everything; and you must write in that letter, just to rile him, that we are going to let all the priests and Jesuits he has driven out come freely into our country.”
“But only on condition that they brew no beer,” interrupted the brewer, Klessens.
The tailor made believe not to have heard this interested remark, and ended his speech with the question, “What do you think of _that_ idea?”
“Bravo, bravo!” cried all; and “You’re a sharp lad; you’re a clever fellow,” added the chairman of the meeting, as he passed his hand complacently over the head whose portrait was shortly to be sent to the Chancellor of the German Empire.
“We haven’t done yet,” continued Holzert; “we have still to find out how we’re going to put your head on the stamps,—with a beard, with a moustache only, or without anything at all.”
“Why, you do think of everything, tailor!” observed Marbaise.
Bauer declared that there could be no two opinions on the point—“With a moustache, that’s quite military,” and, as he spoke, he twisted the ends of his own.
“But I don’t think it would look very well—a red moustache,” objected Marbaise.
“Why, what does that matter? You can’t see it in the picture,” returned Conrads. “Bismarck has a white one.”
“I don’t quite know whether you’re right,” began Holzert again; “just look at Napoleon,—I mean the great Napoleon,—he’s got nothing, no beard and no moustache, and yet he sent the Prussians to the right-about, time and again; but what do you think about it yourself, Bloemstein?”
“Well, what am I to say to you? A beard is not respectable, and I shall have mine shaved off; then we can see if the moustache alone looks well; and if that is not the case, I’ll have that taken off too.”