“But he was good-looking.”

“Yes, good-looking he is.  Most of the people here are good-looking.  A handsome strain of human beings.  But that is the best that can be said of them.  Your Brandenburg people look more unostentatious and more ill-humored, and in their conduct they are less respectful, in fact, are not at all respectful, but their yes is yes and no is no, and one can depend upon them.  Here everybody is uncertain.”

“Why do you tell me that, since I am obliged to live here among them now?”

“Not you.  You will not hear or see much of them.  For city and country are here very different, and you will become acquainted with our city people only, our good people of Kessin.”

“Our good people of Kessin.  Is that sarcasm, or are they really so good?”

“That they are really good is not exactly what I mean to say, but they are different from the others; in fact, they have no similarity whatever to the country inhabitants here.”

“How does that come?”

“Because they are entirely different human beings, by ancestry and association.  The people you find in the country here are the so-called Cassubians, of whom you may have heard, a Slavic race, who have been living here for a thousand years and probably much longer.  But all the inhabitants of our seaports, and the commercial cities near the coast, have moved here from a distance and trouble themselves very little about the Cassubian backwoods, because they derive little profit from that source and are dependent upon entirely different sources.  The sources upon which they are dependent are the regions with which they have commercial relations, and as their commerce brings them into touch with the whole world you will find among them people from every nook and corner of the earth, even here in our good Kessin, in spite of the fact that it is nothing but a miserable hole.”

“Why, that is perfectly charming, Geert.  You are always talking about the miserable hole, but I shall find here an entirely new world, if you have not exaggerated.  All kinds of exotics.  That is about what you meant, isn’t it?”

He nodded his head.

“An entirely new world, I say, perhaps a negro, or a Turk, or perhaps even a Chinaman.”

“Yes, a Chinaman, too.  How well you can guess!  It may be that we still have one.  He is dead now and buried in a little fenced-in plot of ground close by the churchyard.  If you are not easily frightened I will show you his grave some day.  It is situated among the dunes, with nothing but lyme grass around it, and here and there a few immortelles, and one always hears the sea.  It is very beautiful and very uncanny.”

“Oh, uncanny?  I should like to know more about it.  But I would better not.  Such stories make me have visions and dreams, and if, as I hope, I sleep well tonight, I should certainly not like to see a Chinaman come walking up to my bed the first thing.”