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stopped, lit a cigarette and blew out a
puff of smoke. The Privy Councilor squinted at him poisonously with
a predatory right eye.
    “What did you want to tell me?” he asked
lightly.
    The student gave a short laugh. “Oh, nothing.
Nothing at all!”
    He stood up, went to the corner table, picked
up a cigar box and opened it. They were the expensive cigars of the
Privy Councilor.
    “The smokes, dear uncle. Look, Romeo and
Juliet, your brand. The Legal Councilor has certainly not spared
any expense for you!”
    He offered one to the Privy Councilor.
    “Thank you,” growled the professor. “Thank
you. Now once again, what is it that you want to tell me?”
    Frank Braun moved his chair closer.
    “I will tell you Uncle Jakob. But first I
need to reproach you. I don’t like what you did, do you hear me? I
know myself quite well, know that I’ve been wasting my life and
that I continue–Leave that. You don’t care and I’m not asking you
to pay any of my debts.
    I request that you never again write such a
letter to our house. You will write back to mother and tell her
that I am very virtuous, very moral, work very hard and that I’m
moving on and such stuff. Do you understand?”
    “Yes, that I must lie,” said the Privy
Councilor. “It should sound realistic and witty, but it will sound
slimy as a snail, even to her.”
    The student looked at him squarely, “Yes
uncle, you should even lie. Not on my account, you know that, but
for mother.”
    He stopped for a moment gazing into his
glass, “and since you will tell these lies for me, I will now tell
you this.”
    “I am curious,” said the Privy Councilor a
little uncertainly.
    “You know my life,” the student continued and
his voice rang with bitter honesty. “You know that I, up until
today, have been a stupid youth. You know because you are an old
and clever man, highly educated, rich, known by all, decorated with
titles and orders, because you are my uncle and my mother’s only
brother. You think that gives you a right to educate me. Right or
not, you will never do it. No one will ever do it, only life will
educate me.”
    The professor slapped his knee and laughed
out loud. “Yes, life! Just wait youngster. It will educate you soon
enough. It has enough twists and turns, beautiful rules and laws,
solid boundaries and thorny barriers.”
    Frank Braun replied, “They are nothing for
me, much less for me than for you. Have you, Uncle Jakob, ever
fought through the twists, cut through the wiry thorns and laughed
at all the laws? I have.”
    “Pay attention uncle,” he continued. “I know
your life as well. The entire city knows it and the sparrows pipe
their little jokes about you from the rooftops. But the people only
talk to themselves in whispers, because they fear you, fear your
cleverness and your money. They fear your power and your
energy.
    I know why little Anna Paulert died. I know
why your handsome gardener had to leave so quickly for America. I
know many more little stories about you. Oh, I don’t approve,
certainly not. But I don’t think of you as evil. I even admire you
a little perhaps because you, like a little king, can do so many
things with impunity. The only thing I don’t understand is how you
are successful with all the children. You are so ugly.”
    Privy Councilor played with his watch chain.
Then he looked quietly at his nephew, almost flattered.
    “You really don’t understand that?”
    The student replied, “No, absolutely not at
all. But I do understand how you have come to it! For a long time
you’ve had everything that you wanted, everything that a person
could have within the normal constraints of society. Now you want
more. The brook is bored in its old bed, steps here and there over
the narrow banks–It is in your blood.”
    The professor raised his glass, reached it
out to him.
    “Give me another, my boy,” he said. His voice
trembled a little and certainly rang out with solemnity. “You are
right. It is in