The millionaire walked with a heavy tread like a trooper; his big arms stood out from his body like the ribs of some antediluvian animal. His broad chest heaved and fell like a pair of smith's bellows as he greeted the pastor from a distance with phlegmatic nods and loud guffaws; but he did not smile. Indeed, it would have been difficult to imagine what a smile would look like on this fleshy, apathetic face which Nature had fashioned so roughly. Yet it was not repulsive, merely rather strange; it did not inspire fear, only the feeling that opposition to those clumsy hands would be useless. Obviously it was impossible to get at the heart of this battering-ram in human form, but, if injured, the whole fabric would collapse like a building the foundations of which had crumbled away.
"How are you, Martin?" Adler called from the lowest step of the staircase. Shaking the pastor's hand firmly, he went on: "Ah, of course, you were in Warsaw yesterday.... Have you heard anything of my boy? The rascal writes so rarely.... Probably the only person who knows his whereabouts is the banker."
As they stood together in the portico, the little pastor looked, beside his friend, like "a locust beside a camel."
"Well, tell me," Adler continued, sitting down on a little cast-iron seat; its metallic sound as it creaked under his weight harmonized strangely with the thundering roar of the factory. "Has Ferdinand not written to the bank?"
Boehme found himself plunged unwillingly into the middle of his business. Sitting down on the seat facing Adler, he remembered with marvellous presence of mind the opening part of his speech—namely the unfathomable ways of Providence.
The pastor had one drawback; this was that he could not speak fluently without his glasses, which he was in the habit of mislaying. He felt that he ought now to begin the introduction; but how was he to begin without his glasses? He cleared his throat and fidgeted, turned out his pockets and found nothing. Where could he have left his spectacles? He quite forgot his opening sentences.
Adler, who knew his friend by heart, began to feel uneasy.
"Why are you fidgeting like that?" he asked.
"I am sorry—it is very annoying—I have left my spectacles behind."
"What do you want your spectacles for? You are not going to preach a sermon, are you?"