"Willingly, with pleasure, immediately, although, in my opinion, it really isn't necessary any more. You see, dear friend, the fact stands as frightening as it is comfortable to live with that the moon from time to time overwhelms the Royal Prussian legal civil servant Löhnefinke and the latter, ultimately, has not the least objection to raise against the intoxication and dizziness it inspires. Yes, I too found a German girl, wandering in the German moonlight as I did, got engaged to her with the consent of her parents and later married her. And now today I find myself in undisputed possession of an eighteen year old daughter to boot and perhaps afterwards I can introduce both of those ladies to you."
"So you're not running around by yourself here? You haven't been left to your own devices on Sylt?"
"Not at all. I live with my wife and daughter in Westerland and have come here to the spa under their supervision. What do you think of my invitation?"
"Forgive me for asking a silly question, colleague. This is such a wonderful evening, such a pleasing encounter and such an extremely interesting conversation that anything is forgivable."
"Calm down. We understand each other perfectly. Unbeknown to you I have had an eye on you all day. You appealed to me as a person and the lawyer in me immediately recognized you as a kindred spirit and fate allowed me to bump into you literally not without a purpose and with total justification. We had to speak out to each other tonight—it's part of the cure and is in large part due to the salt water. But the moon—I always have to draw your attention back to that splendid moon. Yes, I am bound to it and will need to remain in its bonds until death us do part…"
"Colleague, because of it and with the help of the present moment and the current state of world affairs, I have become the poet in my family. Hold on to that idea and you grasp me in my entirety, both in my mood when we met on the beach and in my present frame of mind."
Löhnefinke the poet in his family! I took several steps backwards. Even though this crazy man stood before me in the moonlight as clear as the island of Sylt itself, the notion struck me forcibly. It was like the crack from a cannon that you observed through an eye-glass as the artillery man blew on the fuse, which is also as if you had received an actual blow.
"I, heir to such an endless stream of prose," my colleague continued, "am defeated by my foe and by him led astray each time he peeps over the horizon despite all my efforts to resist him. I am an idealist in politics and a poet in the conduct of my household affairs. I can see the time coming when I'll be keeping my books of account in hexameters and ottave rime. I'm a stickler for sentiment and cosiness in the course of an hour, and—colleague! colleague!— my women, my ladies don't understand me, don't latch on to me. That's the reason that my nerves are so shattered and the reason why at their instigation (the instigation of my wife and daughter, I mean) I have been brought here to Westerland, and now please do me the honour of coming home with me. It's gradually starting to get very cool."
He had linked me—with delicacy—and we walked arm in arm over the moonlit heathland of Sylt. Never in my life had I with such a poetic Prussian circuit judge strode out hip to hip. He, my exalted colleague, declaimed poetry in an ever louder voice. He showed a truly staggering well-readness in both German and foreign lyricism. Poems addressed to the moon gave way to hymns to freedom and songs of battle against all kinds of enemies both thinkable and unthinkable. Tropical landscapes and mood pictures gave way to stanzas taken from familiar and unfamiliar ballads and romances of every historical and non-historical type of content. Löhnefinke was sublime and his enemy, the moon, could really take pleasure in him. But, being in this state, he would have aroused in more than one of his and my superiors not only moral but also physical disgust. In the distance to the north the revolving light of the lighthouse at Kampen blinked like the eye of a mocker, who draws the attention of those around him to something hilarious. The sheep out on the heath, over whose leashes or retaining ropes we stumbled, stood up and looked after us astonished and amazed.
In this way we got nearer and nearer to the village of Westerland, but before we reached it we were called to and, to all appearances visible and audible, were torn in the nicest possible way out of our dreamy moonlight wandering by night back to reality. Fortunately neither of us fell off the roof.