The host served the lunch, consisting of baked potatoes, cabbage and fried eggs.  Though at any other time this would scarcely have satisfied Frederick, he ate with a hearty appetite and, like Miss Burns, drank American ice-water.

Miss Burns’s manner in talking was thoroughly unconstrained and sprightly.  She had observed that the foundering of the Roland was still too vivid in Frederick’s thoughts, and bearing Peter Schmidt’s warning in mind, purposely turned the conversation away from it.  But Frederick, for some reason dissatisfied with himself for his criticism of his fellow-passengers, tried several times to revert to the shipwreck.  His whole demeanour showed that something was gnawing at him and tormenting him.

“We speak of a justice imminent in the plan of the world.  But why was such a pitiful collection of men saved, while hundreds of others drowned?  Why did that splendid Captain von Kessel drown?  I shall never forget him.  Why did all those splendid picked men of the crew of the Roland drown?  Why and for what purpose was I myself saved?”

“Doctor von Kammacher,” said Miss Burns, “yesterday you were an entirely different man.  You were full of brightness and life; to-day you are all gloom.  I think you are wholly wrong in not being simply grateful for your good fortune.  In my opinion, you are not responsible either for the quality of those who were rescued, or for your own rescue, or for the number of those that sank.  The creation was planned and executed without regard to you, and you have to accept it as it is.  After all, to accept life is the one art the practice of which is really of permanent use.”

“You are right,” said Frederick, “only I am a man.  Besides I inherit a most unnecessary instinct for ideal rather than practical activity.  ’The time is out of joint,’ says your Danish Englishman, Hamlet.  ’O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right.’  I cannot get rid of that absurd megalomania.  To make matters worse, there is the Faust in me that sticks in every good German who thinks anything of himself.  ’I’ve studied now Philosophy and Jurisprudence, Medicine,’ and so on.  As a result, a man has all the more chances of being disillusioned at every turn, and so would rather pledge himself to the devil.  Strange to say, the first thing the devil usually prescribes is a blonde Gretchen, or something like her.”

Miss Burns remained silent, and Frederick felt himself under the necessity of continuing.

“I don’t know whether it is of interest to you to learn something of the remarkable adventures of a German scholar and ideologic bankrupt.”

Miss Burns laughed and said: 

“A bankrupt?  No, I don’t think you are a bankrupt.  Of course, whatever concerns you and whatever you wish to tell me is of interest to me.”

“Very well,” said Frederick, “we’ll see whether you are right.  Conceive a man who, until he was thirty years old, was always going the wrong way, or if not that, then, at least, the trips he took, no matter along what way, always ended precipitately in a broken shaft or a fractured limb.  That I escaped the real catastrophe, the shipwreck, is really most peculiar.  Nevertheless, I think my ship has been wrecked and I with it, or I and my ship are in the midst of foundering.  For I see no land.  I see nothing solid or firm anywhere near me.