"You are quite right. We even have a captain who was once a pirate among the Black Flags."
"I don't know what you mean. What are Black Flags?"
"They are people away off in Tonquin and the South Sea--But since he has been back among men he has resumed the best kind of manners and is quite entertaining."
"I should be afraid of him nevertheless."
"You don't need to be, at any time, not even when I am out in the country or at the Prince's for tea, for along with everything else that we have, we have, thank heaven, also Rollo."
"Yes, Bollo. The name makes you think of the Norman Duke, provided you have ever heard Niemeyer or Jahnke speak of him. Our Rollo has somewhat the same character. But he is only a Newfoundland dog, a most beautiful animal, that loves me and will love you, too. For Rollo is a connoisseur. So long as you have him about you, you are safe, and nothing can get at you, neither a live man nor a dead one. But just see the moon over yonder. Isn't it beautiful?"
[Illustration: _Permission F Bruckmann A -G, Munich_ DIVINE SERVICE IN THE WOODS AT KOSEN ADOLPH VON MENZEL]
Effi, who had been leaning back quietly absorbed, drinking in every word, half timorously, half eagerly, now sat erect and looked out to the right, where the moon had just risen behind a white mass of clouds, which quickly floated by. Copper-colored hung the great disk behind a clump of alders and shed its light upon the expanse of water into which the Kessine here widens out. Or perhaps it might be looked upon as one of the fresh-water lakes connected with the Baltic Sea.
Effi was stupefied. "Yes, you are right, Geert, how beautiful! But at the same time there is something uncanny about it. In Italy I never had such a sensation, not even when we were going over from Mestre to Venice. There, too, we had water and swamps and moonlight, and I thought the bridge would break. But it was not so spooky. What is the cause of it, I wonder? Can it be the northern latitude?"
Innstetten laughed. "We are here seventy-five miles further north than in Hohen-Cremmen, and you have still a while to wait before we come to the first polar bear. I think you are nervous from the long journey and the Panorama, not to speak of the story of the Chinaman."