Outside, in the dusky, damp, and rather empty square five or six coachmen cracked their whips, and a man with a gold-braided cap and a long cape, which he shiveringly wrapped about himself, said with questioning accent: “The Honest Man Inn?” Van der Qualen thanked him courteously and walked straight ahead. The people whom he met had turned up the collars of their coats; for this reason he did so too, nestled his chin against the velvet, puffed at his cigar, and strode on, not fast and not slowly.
He passed a low wall and an old stone gate with two massive towers, and crossed a bridge, on the ramparts of which stood statues; the water rolled beneath, turbidly and lazily. A long, half-rotten barge came by; in the stern a man was steering with a long pole. Van der Qualen stood still for a while and leaned over the wall of the bridge. “Just see,” he thought, “a river; the river. It is well that I don’t know its ordinary name.”—And then he went on.
He continued to walk a little longer upon the pavement of a street which was neither very broad nor very narrow, and then struck off somewhere to the left. It was evening. The electric arc-lamps flared up, sputtered a few times, glowed, hissed, and then lighted up the fog. The shops closed. “Very well,” thought Van der Qualen, “let us say that it is in every respect autumn,” and he strode along on the dark wet pavement. He wore no galoshes, but his boots were extraordinarily broad, solid, and durable, though by no means lacking in elegance.
He walked continuously towards the left. People strode and hurried past him, went about their business or came from their business. “And here I am walking right among them,” he thought, “and am more alone and strange than apparently any other human being has ever been. I have no business and no goal. I have not even a walking-stick for a support. No one could be less attached, freer, less interested. No one owes anything to me; I owe no one anything. God has never extended His hand over me; He does not know me at all. A good faithful misfortune without alms is a good thing; one may then say to oneself: ‘I owe nothing to God.’ ”
The city soon came to an end. Most likely he had proceeded from the centre towards the periphery. He found himself upon a broad suburban street with trees and villas, bent towards the right, passed three or four almost rustic streets, lighted only by gas-lamps, and finally stood still in one that was a little wider, in front of a wooden gate. This was to the right of an ordinary house, painted a turbid yellow, a house distinguished only by utterly untransparent and boldly-curved plate-glass windows. There was a plate attached to the gate, with the inscription: “Rooms to let—third story.” “Really?” said he; he threw away the stump of his cigar, passed through the gate, along a plank which divided this piece of land from the neighbouring one, then to the left through the entrance door, and across the vestibule, which was covered by a cheap strip of carpet, a kind of old grey cover, and began to mount the humble wooden stairs. The doors to the flats were also very modest, with panes of frosted glass, protected by wire-cloth, and each bore some kind of nameplate. The landings of the staircase were lighted by oil-lamps. In the third story, however—it was the topmost, and after that came the attic—there were also entrances to right and left of the staircase—simple brownish doors; no name was to be seen. Van der Qualen pulled the brass bell-knob in the middle.—The bell rang, but no movement was heard from within. He knocked at the door to the left.—No answer. He knocked at the door to the right.—Light, slow footsteps were heard and the door opened.
It was a woman, a large, lean dame, old and tall. She wore a cap with a large bow of dull lilac, and an old-fashioned, faded black dress. She revealed an emaciated, birdlike face, and upon her forehead a patch of eruptions was visible, a mosslike growth. It was a rather revolting thing.
“Good evening,” said Van der Qualen. “The rooms—”
The old lady nodded; she nodded and smiled slowly, dumb and full of understanding, and pointed with a beautiful, white, slender hand, with a slow, tired, and aristocratic gesture towards the opposite door, that to the left. She then withdrew and soon reappeared with a key. “Just see,” thought Van der Qualen, who stood behind her, while she unlocked the door. “You are like a nightmare, like a figure out of the tales of Hoffmann, my gracious lady.”—She took the oil-lamp from the bracket and bade him enter.
It was a small low-ceiled room with a brown floor; the walls, however, were covered with straw-coloured mats up to the top. The window in the rear wall to the right was hidden by the long, slender folds of a white muslin curtain. The white door to the adjoining room was on the right hand.
The old lady opened this door and held up the lamp. This room was miserably bare, with naked, white walls, against which three wicker chairs, enamelled bright red, stood relieved like strawberries against whipped cream. A wardrobe, a washstand and mirror—The bed, an extraordinarily huge piece
