Thus pondering and musing, I strolled back to the town. So still and silent was it, so free from all movement of traffic or business, that I was actually in the very centre of it without knowing it. There were streets without passengers, and shops without customers, and even cafés without guests, and I wondered within myself why people should thus congregate to do nothing, and I rambled on from street to alley, and from alley to lane, never chancing upon one who had anything in hand. At last I gained the side of the lake, along which a little quay ran for some distance, ending in a sort of terraced walk, now grass-grown and neglected. There were at least the charms of fresh air and scenery here, though the worthy citizen seemed to hold them cheaply, and I rambled along to the end, where, by a broad flight of steps, the terrace communicated with the lake; a spot, doubtless, where, once on a time, the burghers took the water and went out a-pleasuring with fat fraus and fräuleins. I had reached the end, and was about to turn back again, when I caught sight of a man, seated on one of the lower steps, employed in watching two little toy ships which he had just launched. Now, this seemed to me the very climax of indolence, and I sat myself down on the parapet to observe him. His proceedings were indeed of the strangest, for as there was no wind to fill the sails and his vessels lay still and becalmed, he appeared to have bethought him of another mode to impart interest to him. He weighted one of them with little stones till he brought her gunwale level with the water, and then pressing her gently with his hand, he made her sink slowly down to the bottom. I 'm not quite certain whether I laughed outright, or that some exclamation escaped me as I looked, but some noise I must unquestionably have made, for he started and turned up his head, and I saw Harpar the Englishman whom I had met the day before at Constance.
“Well, you 're not much the wiser after all,” said he, gruffly, and without even saluting me.
There was in the words, and fierce expression of his face, something that made me suspect him of insanity, and I would willingly have retired without reply had he not risen and approached me.
“Eh,” repeated he, with a sneer, “ain't I right? You can make nothing of it?”
“I really don't understand you!” said I. “I came down here by the merest accident, and never was more astonished than to see you.”
“Oh, of course; I am well used to that sort of thing,” went he on in the same tone of scoff. “I 've had some experience of these kinds of accidents before; but, as I said, it's no use, you 're not within one thousand miles of it, no, nor any man in Europe.”
It was quite clear to me now that he was mad, and my only care was to get speedily rid of him.
“I 'm not surprised,” said I, with an assumed ease,—“I'm not surprised at your having taken to so simple an amusement, for really in a place so dull as this any mode of passing the time would be welcome.”
“Simple enough when you know it,” said he, with a peculiar look.
“You arrived last night, I suppose?” said I, eager to get conversation into some pleasanter channel.