“Now you see, you agree.  But I can’t do any of these things any more.  I can no longer play the man in the hair shirt, let alone the dervish or the fakir, who dances himself to death in the midst of his self-accusations.  And inasmuch as all such things are impossible I have puzzled out, as the best thing for me, to go away from here and off to the coal black fellows who know nothing of culture and honor.  Those fortunate creatures!  For culture and honor and such rubbish are to blame for all my trouble.  We don’t do such things out of passion, which might be an acceptable excuse.  We do them for the sake of mere notions—­notions!  And then the one fellow collapses and later the other collapses, too, only in a worse way.”

“Oh pshaw!  Innstetten, those are whims, mere fancies.  Go to Africa!  What does that mean!  It will do for a lieutenant who is in debt.  But a man like you!  Are you thinking of presiding over a palaver, in a red fez, or of entering into blood relationship with a son-in-law of King Mtesa?  Or will you feel your way along the Congo in a tropical helmet, with six holes in the top of it, until you come out again at Kamerun or thereabouts?  Impossible!”

“Impossible?  Why?  If that is impossible, what then?”

“Simply stay here and practice resignation.  Who, pray, is unoppressed!  Who could not say every day:  ‘Really a very questionable affair.’  You know, I have also a small burden to bear, not the same as yours, but not much lighter.  That talk about creeping around in the primeval forest or spending the night in an ant hill is folly.  Whoever cares to, may, but it is not the thing for us.  The best thing is to stand in the gap and hold out till one falls, but, until then, to get as much out of life as possible in the small and even the smallest things, keeping one eye open for the violets when they bloom, or the Luise monument when it is decorated with flowers, or the little girls with high lace shoes when they skip the rope.  Or drive out to Potsdam and go into the Church of Peace, where Emperor Frederick lies, and where they are just beginning to build him a tomb.  As you stand there consider the life of that man, and if you are not pacified then, there is no help for you, I should say.”

“Good, good!  But the year is long and every single day—­and then the evening.”

“That is always the easiest part of the day to know what to do with.  Then we have Sardanapal, or Coppelia, with Del Era, and when that is out we have Siechen’s, which is not to be despised.  Three steins will calm you every time.  There are always many, a great many others, who are in exactly the same general situation as we are, and one of them who had had a great deal of misfortune once said to me:  ’Believe me, Wuellersdorf, we cannot get along without “false work."’ The man who said it was an architect and must have known about it.  His statement is correct.  Never a day passes but I am reminded of the ‘false work.’”