The slightest hint on his part that he knew how funny he was
would have completely ruined it all. As we continued to laugh, his
surprise gave way to an air of annoyance and indignation, and he scowled
fiercely round upon us all (except upon the two young men who, being
behind him, he could not see). That sent us into convulsions. We told
each other that it would be the death of us, this thing. The words
alone, we said, were enough to send us into fits, but added to his mock
seriousness - oh, it was too much!
In the last verse, he surpassed himself. He glowered round upon us with
a look of such concentrated ferocity that, but for our being forewarned
as to the German method of comic singing, we should have been nervous;
and he threw such a wailing note of agony into the weird music that, if
we had not known it was a funny song, we might have wept.
He finished amid a perfect shriek of laughter. We said it was the
funniest thing we had ever heard in all our lives. We said how strange
it was that, in the face of things like these, there should be a popular
notion that the Germans hadn't any sense of humour. And we asked the
Professor why he didn't translate the song into English, so that the
common people could understand it, and hear what a real comic song was
like.
