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But whilst the Baron's retainers, in celebration of their lord's arrival at Dapsulheim, continued their Olympian games, sometimes butting with their big heads at each other's stomachs, knocking each other over backwards, sometimes springing up in the air again, playing at skittles, being themselves in turn skittles, balls, and players, and so forth, Baron Porphyrio von Ockerodastes got into a very deep and interesting conversation with Herr Dapsul von Zabelthau, which seemed to go on increasing in importance till they went away together hand in hand, and up into the astronomical tower.
About this hour, too, Herr Porphyrio was wont to come forth from his silken palace, and eat a good share of Fräulein Aennchen's bread and butter. "Ah, ah!" she would often whisper softly in his ear, "if papa only knew that you are a real king, dearest Cordovanspitz!" "Be still, oh heart! Melt not away in rapture," Daucus Carota the First would say. "Near, near is the joyful day!"
This Baron Porphyrio von Ockerodastes, otherwise known as Cordovanspitz, is by no means a hostile gnome, although he is descended from one of those elementary spirits who, however, was so fortunate as to purify his nature by the teaching of Oromasis the Salamander.
Suddenly she felt something tugging at her dress, and cried "Down, Feldmann!" thinking it was the Dachshund. But it was not the dog; and what Fräulein Aennchen saw when she took her hands from her eyes was the Herr Baron Porphyrio von Ockerodastes, who hoisted himself into her lap with extraordinary deftness, and clasped both his arms about her.
Herr Dapsul could not make out at all how Fräulein Aennchen had changed her mind so suddenly, and grown quite fond of Herr Porphyrio von Ockerodastes, whom she had so cordially detested before.
This miscreant who made me believe he was Baron Porphyrio von Ockerodastes, known as Cordovanspitz, member of a most illustrious family descended from the mighty gnome Tsilmenech and the noble Abbess of Cordova this miscreant, I say learn it and fall down insensible is indeed a gnome, but of that lowest of all gnomish castes which has charge of the vegetables.
As may be supposed, those three, Herr Porphyrio, Herr Dapsul and Fräulein Aennchen, were one heart and one soul. This went so far that Herr Dapsul left his tower oftener than he had ever been known to do before, to chat with his much-prized son-in-law on all sorts of agreeable subjects; and not only this, but he now regularly took his breakfast in the house.
Fräulein Aennchen was so delighted with these words of the Baron Porphyrio von Ockerodastes that, to show that she wasn't grudging a little bit of hospitality, she was going to offer him the little fritter cakes she had made for the last consecration day, and a small glass of the beetroot brandy, unless he would have preferred double bitters, which the maid had brought from the town and recommended as strengthening to the stomach.
And a descendant of the sublime family of higher intelligences which sprung from this union is our dear Baron Porphyrio von Ockerodastes, who has adopted the sobriquet of Cordovanspitz to indicate his ancestral connection with Cordova in Spain, and to distinguish himself by it from a more haughty but less worthy collateral line of the family, which bears the title of 'Saffian. That a 'spitz' has been added to the 'Cordovan' doubtless possesses its own elementary astrological causes; I have not as yet gone into that subject.
"Oh, my most egregious Porphyrio von Ockerodastes, won't you come into the kitchen with my daughter and me, and see what beautiful order your future bride has got everything in there?" Aennchen had never seen the wicked, malicious look upon her father's face before, which it wore when he took little Daucus by the arm, and almost forced him from the sitting-room to the kitchen.
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