When we broke up we decided to take along with us what was left over of Alfons' provisions.
There must be enough for several men still.
But we found only the paper.
"Zum Dormenvetter—" said Lenz. "Aha!" He pointed to Jupp, who grinned sheepishly, his hands still full and with a belly that stood off him like a drum. "Another record."
At the supper at Alfons' Pat was having too much success for my liking.
I caught Grau once again in the act of proposing to paint her.
She laughed and said it took too long for her; photographing would be more convenient.
"And that's more his line too," said I amiably. "Perhaps he will paint you from a photograph."
"Calm yourself, Bob," replied Ferdinand unperturbed, gazing at Pat out of his immense, blue child's eyes. "Schnapps makes you bad-tempered—me human.
That's the difference between our generations."
"He's quite ten years older than I," I interposed.
"That is a generation's difference these days," Ferdinand continued. "A lifetime's difference. A thousand years' difference.
What do you children understand of existence?
You're afraid even of your own feelings.
You don't write letters—you telephone; you don't dream—you go for week-end excursions; you are rational in love and irrational in politics—a pitiable race."
I was listening with one ear; with the other I was trying to hear what Braumuller was saying.
Already a little tipsy, he was explaining to Patricia Hollmann that she simply must let him teach her to drive.
He would show her all his tricks.
At the first opportunity I took him aside.
"It's unhealthy, Oscar, for a sportsman to bother too much about women."
"Not for me," observed Braumuller, "I've a wonderful constitution."
"Very well.
In that case I'll tell you something that definitely would be unhealthy for you—if you got one from this bottle on the top of the head."
He grinned.
"Put up your dagger, boy.
Do you know how one knows a cavalier when one sees him?
He always behaves decently when he is drunk.
And what do you think I am?"
"A Renommist," I replied and left him standing.
I had no fear that any of them really meant to try anything—that was not done amongst us.
But I didn't know so well how it might be with the girl—it could very well be that one of the others might suit her admirably.
We knew each other too little for me to be sure of that.
How could one be sure anyway?
"Should we vanish quietly?" I asked her.
She nodded.
We walked through the streets.
It had turned damp.
Mists were rising slowly over the city, green and silver mists.
I took her hand and put it in my coat pocket.
Thus we walked a long while.
"Tired?" I asked.
She shook her head and smiled.
I pointed to the cafes we were passing.
"Would you like to go in somewhere?"
"No. Not again yet."
We walked on. Then we came to the graveyard.
The trees rustled, their tops were no longer visible.
As the mist continued to thicken the fairy light began.
May bugs came reeling drunk out of the limes and buzzed heavily against the wet panes of the street lamps.
The mist transformed everything, lifted it up and bore it away, the hotel opposite was already afloat like an ocean liner with lighted cabins on the black mirror of the asphalt, the grey shadow of the church behind it became a ghostly sailing-ship with tall masts, lost in the grey-red light; and now the houses, like.a long line of barges, came adrift and began to move.