The visiting card with this name printed in large Roman characters lies before me and seems to throw a crafty and comical smile at me. In fact my new acquaintance is very amusing. The card was brought in to me at the end of my afternoon office hours. Herr Jonas Goldstücker! I thought it was a patient, and had him admitted even though the time for receiving patients was past. A few moments later an elderly man sat before me, well-preserved and decently dressed. He was perfectly open in letting his curious gaze rove through my room, and I felt that in a minute period of time he had a thorough survey. His inventory took in all the objects in the room, myself included. His sly eyes seemed ever to be investigating and inspecting, and although he frequently pressed them shut, or glanced into space over his nickel-plated pince-nez, one felt correctly catalogued and pigeonholed. Herr Jonas Goldstücker began to interest me. Without waiting for me to ask his business, he said:
"I knew, Herr Kreisphysikus, that you always stay at home a little while after your office hours, and that's the reason I chose this time for coming to you; I thought we would not be disturbed now."
So he was acquainted with my habits, with something about my private life; he wanted to speak to me without outside interruption—did this man know of some secret? Did a matter calling for discretion lead him to me? But he gave me no time for surmise, and added:
"You certainly don't run after practice among well-to-do patients; no one can reproach you with that—you live like a hermit; and outside of Simon Eichelkatz no one has had the honor of seeing you at his home."
My face must have looked very stupid, or it must have expressed great amazement at his intimate tone and his familiarity with my affairs; because he laughed and said:
"Yes, Herr Kreisphysikus, in a little town you get to know people, and all about them."
"But I don't know you," I interrupted, my patience at last exhausted.
"I am Jonas Goldstücker."
"So your card tells me. But I should like to permit myself the question, to what I owe the honor of your visit."
"O, you'll soon find out, Herr Kreisphysikus. I am not sick, as you see. Quite another reason brings me to you. But if I should need medical advice, I shall not fail to come to you, although Sanitätsrat Ehrlich has been treating me for six years—since the time his daughter Annie married Herr Rechtsanwalt Bobrecker of Leobschütz. An excellent match. Any day Bobrecker might have gotten sixty thousand marks, and Löwenberg, the wool manufacturer in Oppeln, would have given him as much as seventy-five thousand, but he wanted to marry a girl from an educated family, and no other. Well, the daughter of Sanitätsrat Ehrlich is no vain delusion."