“I brought them along in a bag,” he said. “I couldn’t expect to go tramping all over your carpets here in my street shoes. But I stupidly forgot to bring along a shoehorn, and, by Jove, I couldn’t get into them at all—imagine the stupid fix! I’ve never had such tight pumps in my life. The sizes are all different now, there’s no depending on them, and then the stuff they use nowadays!—why, it isn’t leather at all, it’s hard as cast iron! I’ve mashed my whole finger.” He showed his reddened forefinger confidentially, and referred to the episode again as a “fix,” and a most disgusting one. He spoke in precisely the way Ingrid had imitated—in a very nasal manner, with a peculiar drawl, obviously without affectation, because it was the habit of all Hergesells to talk that way.
Doctor Cornelius expressed regret that there had been no shoehorn in the cloakroom and manifested due sympathy for the forefinger. “Now, you mustn’t let me disturb you in the slightest,” he said; “auf wiedersehen!” and he crossed the hall to the dining-room.
Here too there were guests. The dining-table had been drawn out full length, and tea was being served at it. But the professor went straight to his own little nook, which was tapestried with embroidery and lighted by its own little ceiling light, where stood the small round table at which he was accustomed to drink his tea. He found his wife there, engaged in conversation with Bert and two other young gentlemen. One of them was Herzl; Cornelius recognized and greeted him. The other was called Möller—a type of the “Wandervogel,” who apparently neither possessed nor cared to possess a suit of ordinary party clothes, bourgeois clothes (the concept really meant very little any more). He was a young fellow who was evidently not at all ambitious to play the “gentleman” (another concept which had become vitiated). He wore a linen blouse with a belt and knickers, a thick mane of hair, and horn-rimmed spectacles. His neck was long and thin. He was engaged in a bank, as the professor discovered, but in addition to this he was also active as a kind of artistic folklorist, a collector and singer of folk-ballads from all zones and tongues. He had brought along his guitar, by special request. It was still hanging in its oilcloth cover in the cloakroom.
Herzl, the actor, was small and slight, but he had a strong black beard, as was evident from too heavy powdering after his shave. His eyes were overlarge, glowing, and melancholy. In addition to the large quantities of powder he had used, he had apparently applied also a bit of rouge—the faint carmine upon his cheekbones was obviously of cosmetic origin. “How remarkable!” thought the professor; one would imagine that he would cling to either one thing or the other—either to his melancholy or to his rouge. Taken together they formed a psychological contradiction. Why should a misanthrope rouge himself? But here, no doubt, was the peculiar, alien form of the artistic nature, which rendered this contradiction possible, or even consisted of it. Well, it was interesting and no real reason for his not being quite hearty with him. It was a legitimate thing, possibly a primitive thing.—“Will you have lemon in your tea, Herr Hofschauspieler—Herr Court Actor?”
Court actors, of course, were a thing of the past, but Herzl was fond of the title, despite the fact that he was a revolutionary artist. And that was another contradiction which was part of his spiritual equipment. The professor had rightly conjectured that this contradiction existed, and hence flattered him, as a kind of reparation for the secret repugnance he had felt upon becoming aware of the light shade of rouge on Herzl’s cheeks.
“My most devoted thanks, my dear Herr Professor,” said Herzl, so hurriedly that he was saved from tangling his tongue only by means of his superb elocutionary technique. His attitude towards his hosts, and especially towards the master of the house, was inspired by the greatest degree of respect; it was in fact almost excessively, even subserviently, polite. It was as though he felt a certain sense of guilt because of the rouge, which some inner compulsion had forced him to apply, but of which he disapproved, for the same reasons perhaps as the professor himself, and sought to conciliate an unrouged world by the greatest modesty he could muster.
Conversation went on, while tea was being drunk, passing from Möller’s folk-songs, from Spanish and Basque folk-songs, to the new production of Schiller’s Don Carlos at the National Theatre, a production in which Herzl was to play the title-role. He began to talk of his interpretation of Don Carlos. “I hope,” he said, “that my Don Carlos will be a perfect unity, an organic whole.” There was also critical talk of the cast, of the values of the scenery, of the atmosphere and the milieu; and almost before he was aware, the professor saw himself steered into his favourite channel, the Spain of the Counter-Reformation, which affected him rather painfully. He was quite innocent; he had done nothing to give the conversation this turn. He was seized by the fear that it might look as though he had sought an opportunity to lecture, began to wonder, and then relapsed into silence. He was glad when the Little Ones, Lorie and Biter, came to the table. They were dressed in blue velvet, their Sunday apparel, and were bent on participating in their own fashion in the fun of the Big Ones until bedtime. They said good evening to the strangers shyly, making big eyes the while, and were then called upon to tell
