“Rollo?”

“Yes, Bollo.  The name makes you think of the Norman Duke, provided you have ever heard Niemeyer or Jahnke speak of him.  Our Rollo has somewhat the same character.  But he is only a Newfoundland dog, a most beautiful animal, that loves me and will love you, too.  For Rollo is a connoisseur.  So long as you have him about you, you are safe, and nothing can get at you, neither a live man nor a dead one.  But just see the moon over yonder.  Isn’t it beautiful?”

[Illustration:  Permission F Bruckmann A -G, Munich DIVINE SERVICE IN THE WOODS AT KOSEN ADOLPH VON MENZEL]

Effi, who had been leaning back quietly absorbed, drinking in every word, half timorously, half eagerly, now sat erect and looked out to the right, where the moon had just risen behind a white mass of clouds, which quickly floated by.  Copper-colored hung the great disk behind a clump of alders and shed its light upon the expanse of water into which the Kessine here widens out.  Or perhaps it might be looked upon as one of the fresh-water lakes connected with the Baltic Sea.

Effi was stupefied.  “Yes, you are right, Geert, how beautiful!  But at the same time there is something uncanny about it.  In Italy I never had such a sensation, not even when we were going over from Mestre to Venice.  There, too, we had water and swamps and moonlight, and I thought the bridge would break.  But it was not so spooky.  What is the cause of it, I wonder?  Can it be the northern latitude?”

Innstetten laughed.  “We are here seventy-five miles further north than in Hohen-Cremmen, and you have still a while to wait before we come to the first polar bear.  I think you are nervous from the long journey and the Panorama, not to speak of the story of the Chinaman.”

“Why, you didn’t tell me any story.”

“No, I only mentioned him.  But a Chinaman is in himself a story.”

“Yes,” she laughed.

“In any case you will soon recover.  Do you see the little house yonder with the light?  It is a blacksmith’s shop.  There the road bends.  And when we have passed the bend you will be able to see the tower of Kessin, or to be more exact, the two.”

“Has it two?”

“Yes, Kessin is picking up.  It now has a Catholic church also.”

A half hour later the carriage stopped at the district councillor’s residence, which stood clear at the opposite end of the city.  It was a simple, rather old-fashioned, frame-house with plaster between the timbers, and stood facing the main street, which led to the sea-baths, while its gable looked down upon a grove, between the city limits and the dunes, which was called the “Plantation.”  Furthermore this old-fashioned frame-house was only Innstetten’s private residence, not the real district councillor’s office.  The latter stood diagonally across the street.