Well, to proceed. We went to table.
Everything according to form and in abundance. Flowers, silverware, baumkuchen.
To begin with, a little glass of sherry to warm up your stomach. The sherry was good but the glass was small and I could not see any more sherry about.
"Now you must be very gallant and tender to her," I said to myself and looked at her sidewise. Her elbow was grazing my arm and I could feel how she was trembling.
"She's hungry," I thought, for I had not eaten a thing myself yet.
Her eyes were fixed on the candelabra in front of her. Their silvery sheen in the course of the years had faded and wrinkled like the skin of an old woman.
Her profile! God, how beautiful!
And that was to belong to me.
Nonsense!
And I tossed off a tumblerful of thin Rhine wine, which gurgled in my empty stomach like bubbles in a duck puddle.