In the winter a pleasant feature had been the theater or opera nights. Darkness then came at four. Dinner would be served at five in order to reach the amusement place at half past six or seven. By eleven the family were back in Loschwitz, sitting down, starved, to a bouncing supper where frequently Kirtley regaled himself with the toothsome Pumpernickel. Over the hot dishes the feverish points of the entertainment were discussed, exclaimed about, while the party cooled off and solaced themselves with Schultheiss. These were rousing and satisfying little happenings.
Free public lectures had also been a source of enjoyment to the Buchers during the long frigid fortnights. Of the five senses, Gard reflected, hearing is the only good one the Germans possess. They hear, absorb through hearing, to better advantage than other races. They close their eyes and drink in seriously. Naturally enough comes about the universality of their music and lectures.
Of these public dissertations a course on the Union between Greek Philosophy and Greek Poetry was especially raved over in Villa Elsa. Gard attended one of these evenings, inspired by the instructional ardors of Frau and Fräulein and Ernst. The example of little Ernst, avid of such intellectual pleasures at his tender age, ever impressed Gard anew. He thought of American lads in comparison.
The German professor, as is well known, occupies a much more potent and exalted position in Germany than the American professor in America. He is considered a reliable fount of wisdom. He speaks with sure authority. He is an oracle, permanent and sounding afar.
On this occasion, precisely at eight o'clock, in a majestic university hall, Kirtley saw this particular grand and popular orator ascend the pulpit. He was in full dress—white waistcoat, white tie, white kids. He was large, shapely, commanding. The women were "at his feet." He stood there solemnly as the clock was striking, and slowly removed his gloves and inserted them under his coat tail. And for exactly an hour there was a remarkable flow of formidable, finished periods, without a note, without a hesitation. Gard really felt there would never be anything else to say about Beauty, so profound, so complete, so final, seemed this survey of the topic.
At the close the audience flocked to the speaker as if to an Olympian victor. Frau Bucher was ecstatic, covering him with her compliments while insisting on waiting for a propitious moment to introduce Herr Kirtley. But as Gard remained there at the lecturer's elbow, he met with another disillusion about German professors. This locally famous man, so correctly dressed to outward view, wore no shirt collar under his beard. His neck and ears showed no signs of recent ablutions and were bushy with unkempt hairs. And he exhaled a rank odor compounded of perspiration and dirt.
Gard almost choked, being crowded into close contact. Could he ever get fully accustomed to German smells? It was most unpleasant, disenchanting. He could not, it appeared, find himself attracted to Teuton university expounders—those gods of wisdom who had repulsed him.
Whether it was his unfortunate luck or not, he was not able to summon a desire to go again. He had not forgotten his other experience. It was a part of that something fundamentally, monumentally lacking in the German race—something shoddy, deceptive, which he had met with at so many turns.