“Had I forgotten you?” he asked “No, never! Not you, Hans; nor you, blonde Inge! It was really you I was working for; and if I heard applause, I looked stealthily around me to see whether you had joined in it. … Have you read Don Carlos by now, Hans Hansen, as you promised me by your garden gate? Don’t do it! I don’t require it of you any more. What do you care about the king who cries because he is lonesome? You shall not make your bright eyes sad and dreamy from dwelling on verses and melancholy. … To be like you! To begin again, grow up like you; be upright, cheerful, and simple; regular, orderly, and on easy terms with God and the world, to be loved by the harmless and the happy, to take you for a wife, Ingeborg Holm, and have a son like you, Hans Hansen—to live free from the curse of knowledge and the pains of creation, to love and praise in blessed mediocrity! … Begin again! But it would do no good. Everything would turn out again as it did before. For often people go astray because there simply is no right path for them.”
Now the music was silent; there was a pause, and refreshments were handed around. The assistant in person hurried about among the ladies, serving them from a tray of herring salad. But before Ingeborg Holm he even dropped on one knee as he held out the dish to her, and she blushed with pleasure at this.
Yet by now the people in the hall were beginning to notice the onlooker beyond the glass door; and distant, inquisitive glances from pretty, heated faces were directed towards him. But he held his ground regardless. Also, the eyes of Ingeborg and Hans brushed past him almost at the same moment, with that total indifference which almost has the appearance of disdain. Yet suddenly he became aware that someone’s gaze was penetrating to him and resting upon him. He turned his head, and his eyes immediately encountered those which he had felt were glued upon him. Not far from him a girl whom he had noticed before, with a pale, narrow, and delicate face, was standing. She had not danced much; the cavaliers had not been especially concerned about her; and he had seen her sitting against the wall with firmly compressed lips. She was now standing alone again. She was dressed in bright fragrant garments like the others, but beneath the transparent stuff of her dress her exposed shoulders gleamed frail and angular, and the lean neck was set so deep between the paltry shoulders that the quiet girl seemed almost a bit deformed. She held her hands, which were covered with short flimsy gloves, over her flat breast in such a way that the fingertips met gently. With bowed head, she was looking up at Tonio Kröger through black, swimming eyes. He turned away. …
Here, quite near him, Hans and Ingeborg were sitting. He had taken a seat next to this girl who might have been his sister; and, surrounded by other red-cheeked children of mankind, they were eating and drinking, chatting and enjoying themselves, bantering back and forth at one another with ringing voices, and laughing brightly into the air. Could he not approach them a little? Make whatever jovial remark might occur to him, something at least which they would have to answer with a smile? It would make him happy; he yearned to do it; he would then return more contentedly to his room, with the knowledge that he had restored some slight common bond with the two of them. He thought out what he could say, but he did not master the courage to say it. Then too, things must surely be the same as before: they would not understand him, would listen distantly to what he could say to them. For their language was not his language.
Now the dance seemed about to begin again. The assistant developed an all-embracing activity. He bustled about urging everyone to take partners, cleared away chairs and glasses with the help of the waiter, distributed instructions among the musicians, and, grasping the shoulders of clumsy people here and there who didn’t know what to do with themselves, he steered them along in front of him. What was going to be done next? Four by four, pairs were forming into carrés. … A terrible recollection made Tonio Kröger blush. They were to dance the quadrille.
The music struck up, and the pairs came together bowing. The assistant gave the command; he gave the command, by God, in French, and he pronounced the nasal sounds in an incomparably distinguished manner. Ingeborg Holm was dancing close by Tonio Kröger, in the carré stationed immediately in front of the glass door. She moved here and there, back and forth, stepping and turning. Often he caught a fragrance which came from her hair or from the delicate stuff of her dress; and he closed his eyes with an emotion which had been so well known to him from of old; all throughout these recent days he had caught faintly its aroma and acrid charm, and now again it filled him with its sweet oppressiveness. Just what was it? Yearning? Tenderness? Envy, self-contempt? … Moulinet des dames! Did you laugh, blonde Inge, did you laugh at me, when I danced the moulinet and made such a pitiable ass of myself? And would you laugh again today too, now that I have
