"Spiritus leid' ich nicht," shrieked the woman.
"No," said the dentist, "we can't have cooking here."
"Spiritus leid'...."
But I fled. Luckily, we had not paid any rent in advance. I made up my mind that I would never confess to my small harmless Etna in German lodgings again, and would bolt the door while I boiled water for tea in it. We found rooms after another weary search, but they were extremely noisy and uncomfortable. We had to take them for six weeks, and could only endure them for a fortnight, and though we paid them the full six weeks' rent when we left, they charged us for every jug of hot water we had used, and added a Trinkgeld for the servant.
"We did not engage to pay extra either for hot water or for Trinkgeld," we said, turning, as worms will even in a Residenz, where everyone is a worm who is not Militär.
"But Engländer never give a Trinkgeld. That is why we have put it in the bill. The girl expects it, and has earned it."
"The girl will have it," we said; "but we shall give it her ourselves. And what have you to say about the hot water?"
"Without coal it is impossible to have hot water. We let you our rooms, but we did not let you our coal. It is quite simple. Have you any other complaint to make?"
We had, but we did not make them. We went to one of the big cities, where the civilian is still a worm, but where he has a large number and variety of other worms to keep him company. In Berlin or Hamburg or Leipzig there are always furnished rooms delighted to receive you. There may be a difficulty, however, if you are a musician. The police come in with their regulations; or your fellow-lodgers may be students of medicine or philosophy, and driven wild by your harmonies. I knew a young musician who always took rooms in the noisiest street in Berlin, and practised with his windows open. He said the din of electric trams, overhead trains, motor cars, and heavy lorries helped his landlady and her family to suffer a Beethoven sonata quite gladly.
One of the insoluble mysteries of German life is the cheapness of furnished lodgings as compared with the high rent and rates. To be sure, the landlady does not cook for you, and the bed-sitting-room is not considered sordid in Germany. In fact, the separate sitting-room is almost unknown, though it is easy to arrange one by shifting some furniture. The pattern of the room and its appointments hardly vary in any part of Germany, though of course the size and quality vary with the price. If you take a small room you have one straight window, and if you take a large one you have several. Or you may have a broad balcony window opening on to a balcony. You have the parqueted or painted floor, the porcelain stove, the sofa, the table, the wooden bedstead, and the wooden hanging cupboard wherever you are. It is always sensible, comfortable furniture, and usually plain. When people over there know no better they buy themselves tawdry horrors, just as they do here. The German manufacturers flood the world with such things. But people who let lodgings put their treasures in a sacred room they call das beste Zimmer, and only use on festive occasions. They fob you off with old-fashioned stuff they do not value, a roomy solid cupboard, a family sofa, a chest of drawers black with age, and a hanging mirror framed in old elm-wood; and if it were not for a bright green rep tablecloth, snuff-coloured curtains, and a wall paper with a brown background and yellow snakes on it, you would like your quarters very well indeed. Rooms are usually let by the month, except in watering-places, where weekly prices prevail. In Leipzig you can get a room for 10s. a month. It will be a parterre or a fourth-floor room, rather gloomy and rather shabby, but a possible room for a student who happens to be hard up. For £1 a month you can get a room on a higher floor, and better furnished, while for £1, 10s. a month in Hamburg I myself have had two well-furnished rooms commanding a fine view of the Alster, and one of them so large that in winter it was nearly impossible to keep warm. Then my Hamburg friends told me I was paying too much, and that they could have got better lodgings for less money. They were nearer the sky than I should like in these days, but the old German system of letting the higher flats in a good house for a low rent benefits people who care about a "select" neighbourhood and yet cannot pay very much. The modern system of lifts will gradually make it impossible to get a flat or lodgings in a good street without paying as much for the fifth floors as for the first.