"The good man of the hat trick!" said Caterna, after the baron went
back into the car without favoring us with a salute.

"He is quite German enough!" said Madame Caterna.

"And to think that Henry Heine called those people sentimental oaks!" I
added.

"Then he could not have known that one!" said Caterna. "Oak, I admit,
but sentimental--"

"Do you know why the baron has patronized the Grand Transasiatic?" I
asked.

"To eat sauerkraut at Pekin!" said Caterna.

"Not at all. To rival Miss Nelly Bly. He is trying to get around the
world in thirty-nine days."

"Thirty-nine days!" exclaimed Gaterna. "You should say a hundred and
thirty-nine!"

And in a voice like a husky clarinet the actor struck up the well-known
air from the Cloches de Corneville:

"I thrice have been around the world."

Adding, for the baron's benefit:

"He will not do the half."