“Up there, in the cigar-box. But don’t knock that rapier down.”
Balder climbed up on a cane chair. It gave way. Klirr! The rapier fell on the floor, and Balder with it.
“Confound you, do take care. Didn’t I warn you?” An energetic knocking at the door of communication interrupted me.
“Herr Reif, I must really beg you to be quiet,” called my landlady’s daughter, not by any means in her sweetest tones. “We’ve been kept awake for the last hour.”
“That’s nothing to us,” said Balder from the floor, where he was groping for the rapier that had rolled under the wardrobe.
“Do be quiet! That is my landlady’s daughter, a very respectable girl—”
“Well, is nobody respectable except her? What do you pay rent for?” His face grew red with rage, and, placing his mouth close to the door, he called out, “What do you want with Reif? He’s in bed. I only wanted to reach down the sugar, and the old rapier fell on my head—a thing that might happen to anybody! Just lie down quietly and go to sleep. Such a fuss about nothing! Are we in a hospital?”
“IT GAVE WAY!”
“Do be quiet, Balder!” I begged, and my pleading at least had the effect of silencing whatever else was on his tongue. He thought no more of the sugar, but sat at the table and drank his self-brewed coffee without it. When he had finished it he lighted a cigarette, at which he puffed away till the room was full of smoke. As I lay and looked at him, I fell into that peaceful state in which dreaming and reality are so much mixed that it is hard to distinguish between them. And then Balder disappeared in clouds of smoke, and I heard and saw no more. I was awakened again by a light being held near my face. Balder was standing at my bedside with the candle in his hand. “Ah! I’m glad you’ve been asleep again!” he said, as I half-opened my eyes and looked at him. “I want to make a poem to my Spaniard. Have you got a rhyming dictionary anywhere about?”