Maria Mondmilch arrived in a large city.  The strangers with whom she boarded were paid a large amount of money.  But otherwise they did not concern themselves with Maria Mondmilch.  She exchanged secret letters with the noble uncle, filled with overflowing longing for life and hopes for adventure.  The consciousness of constantly having something to hide gave her a solemn, inexplicable superiority.  Maria Mondmilch preserved her uncle’s letters as though they were sacred relics.  Some of the letters were lost and became evidence in the famous divorce trial that excited the whole country.

Maria Mondmilch was a student in the big city at a girls’ high school She was not among the best students.  Sometimes she used her time diligently.  She was accused of having instigated all kinds of dirty tricks that took place.  When it became know that the head of the institution had met her in the evening on a disreputable street, it was expected that she would be dismissed from school.  In the proceedings against a teacher of literature at the high school who, in spite of being accused of having committed several sexual crimes, had to be acquitted, she was the most important witness.

The young girl preferred to spend the night in the notorious section of the city.  Maria Mondmilch allowed every possible kind of riff-raff, to speak to her, but she ran away from most of the men.  She was not yet fifteen years old when she permitted a peddlar, whose acquaintance

she had made one filthy evening in a foul alley on a bridge, under neglected, ancient gas lamps, to photograph her naked in indecent poses.  When she was sixteen years old, she spent Christmas vacation with a handsome electrician, who was a complete stranger to her, named Hans Hampelmann, in a run-down hotel, posing as husband and wife.  Given her erotic needs, it was not difficult to explain her decision to study medicine after graduating.

The hungry actor Schwertschwanz—­an intelligent and worn-out looking person, who stank of cheap chocolate—­moved with aimless longing through the nocturnal, glittering, noisy streets of the city in which Maria Mondlich studied medicine.  He met her while she was returning sadly from a lecture on human sexual diseases and male disorders.  For fun—­pretty much—­he spoke to her.  Together they both went into a cheap saloon.

Before speaking to the student, the actor Schwertschwanz had been thinking about what could most readily explain the doubt he had had for many years:  the ultimate unimportance of all events; or only the happenstance that important people often must croak because of a lack of appropriate nourishment and medicine... the inadequacy of women...  The incurable nature of Tabes disease, the symptoms of which he believed he detected in himself...  When Maria Mondmilch named her profession, he lit up.  Syphilis and its consequences were mentioned.  Miss Mondmilch told of frightening cases.  Mr. Schwertschwanz listened, shocked and carried away.  He was fascinated when she, coquetishly stressing that she unfortunately could maintain only professional relationships with men, as though unintentionally revealed a well shaped but austere leg, that was encased in an exciting, ordinary, half silk stocking.