Doktor Doktor Bombastus Paracelsus (page 8)
Two men sat in the breakfast room of Villa Undine, though it was evening. There was a fire in the kamin, though it was summer. But it was summer at the Baltic, and it had rained. The sea-air was cold, and the two men moved their comfortably low chairs closer to the small crackling fire, and warmed their insides with Frisian tea. The cream swirled and bloomed in their cups like sea-flower as they dipped rock sugar on sticks into the cups to sweeten.
Janosch A. Prufrock handed his companion, a rotund jolly-looking, though shrewd-about-the-eyes man, a small delicately printed confectionery box. The jowly man’s quick eyes lit up with pleasure as he recognized the script on the box.
“From that old fellow Niederegger in Lübeck?”
”Yes, he spent twelve hours making it.”
The rotund man opened the box with pleasure, and the sweet scent of almond paste and sugar wafted up, lightly dancing into their noses. Inside was an exquisitely made marzipan in the form of a meer-maid. In one hand she held a great gemstone, in the other she held a small boy, whose face, even in marzipan, had a shy look about him.
“Ahh!” gasped Doktor Doktor Bombastus Paracelsus before tearing into the delicious confection, “you, too, are after the Edelstone?”
Janosch A. Prufrock did not deny it.