Good! I am completely upset, and I could not help shrugging my shoulders, when the major whispers to me:
“Perhaps one of the bandit chiefs with whom the Grand Transasiatic had to make terms!”
“Come, major, be serious.”
The visit was nearing its end when Baron Weissschnitzerdörfer appeared.
He is preoccupied, he is troubled, he is anxious, he is confused, he is fidgety. Why is he shaking, and bending, and diving into his pockets like a man who has lost something valuable?
“Your papers!” demands the interpreter in German.
“My papers!” replies the baron, “I am looking for them. I have not got them; they were in my letter case.”
And he dived again into his trousers pockets, his waistcoat pockets, his coat pockets, his great-coat pockets—there were twenty of them at the least—and he found nothing.
“Be quick—be quick!” said the interpreter. “The train cannot wait!”
“I object to its going without me!” exclaimed the baron. “These papers—how have they gone astray? I must have let them drop out of my case. They should have given them back to me—”