"A fool."
"No. That is another exaggeration. But you are something else. In Hohen-Cremmen we always said, I along with the rest, that the most conceited person in the world was a hussar ensign at eighteen."
"And now?"
"Now I say, the most conceited person in the world is a district major of the landwehr at forty-two."
"Incidentally, my other two years that you most graciously ignore make amends for the remark. Kiss the hand" (—My respects to you).
"Yes, 'kiss the hand.' That is just the expression that fits you. It is Viennese. And the Viennese—I made their acquaintance four years ago in Carlsbad, where they courted me, a fourteen-year-old slip of a girl. What a lot of things I had to listen to!"
"Certainly nothing more than was right."
"If that were true, the intended compliment would be rather rude—But see the buoys yonder, how they swim and dance. The little red flags are hauled in. Every time I have seen the red flags this summer, the few times that I have ventured to go down to the beach, I have said to myself: there lies Vineta, it must lie there, those are the tops of the towers."
"That is because you know Heine's poem."
"Which one?"