“No. I cannot remember that he did.”
“Had he any brothers or sisters?”
“No, he was the only child.”
“Did he know when he came that his grandfather was dead?”
“No. It was a great disappointment to him. When he was a boy the grandfather had lived in his parents’ house and been kind to him. Then one day there had been a quarrel and the old man had gone.”
“Did he say how he knew that the old man had lived at Bad Schwennheim?”
“Yes. The quarrel had been serious, and after Friedrich left, his name was never mentioned by the boy’s parents. But the boy loved his grandfather. Even before he went to school the old man had taught him how to write and to rule his exercise books properly. Later the grandfather helped him with arithmetic problems and talked to him much of commercial affairs. You knew Friedrich Schirmer was a bookkeeper?”
“Yes.”
“The boy did not forget him. When he was about fourteen his parents received a letter from the old man saying that he was retiring to live at Bad Schwennheim. He had heard them discussing it. They destroyed the letter, but he remembered the name of the town, and when he was sent to the army school there he tried to find his grandfather. He did not know until I told him that, by a strange chance, he was living in the building where the old man had died.”
“I see.”