ls, the Inspector is coming
to-day; pull yourselves together; please don't leave me in the lurch."
So it must be true what Oswald always says that the inspectors come to
inspect the teachers and not the pupils. "At the inspection," Oswald
often says, "every pupil has the professor in his hands." Being
first, of course I was called upon, and I simply could not think what
"trotteur" meant. I would not say "Trottel" [idiot], and so I said
nothing at all. Then Anneliese turned round and whispered it to me, but
of course I was not going to say it after her, but remained speechless
as an owl. At length the Herr Inspektor said: "Translate the sentence
right to the end, and then you'll grasp its meaning." But I can't see
the sense of that; for if I don't know one of the words the sentence has
no meaning, or at least not the meaning it ought to have. If Hella had
not been absent to-day because of -- --, she might have been able to
whisper it to me. Afterwards Frau Doktor Dunker reproached me, saying
that no one could ever trust anyone, and that I really did not deserve
a One. "And the stupidest thing of all was that you laughed when you did
not know a simple word like that." Of course I could not tell her that
my first thought had been to translate it "Trottel." Unseen translation
is really too difficult for us.

June 28th. The Staff Meeting is to-day. I'm on tenter hooks to know
whether I shall have a Reprimand, or a bad conduct mark in my report.
That would be awful. It does not matter so much to Hella, for her father
has just gone away to manoeuvres in Hungary or in Bosnia, and by
the time he is back the holidays will have begun and no one will be
bothering about reports any more. So I shall know to-morrow. Oh bother,
to-morrow is a holiday and next day is Sunday. So for another 2 1/2 days
I shall have "to linger in suspense," but a different sort of suspense
from what Goethe wrote about.

June 30th. We were at home yesterday and this afternoon because of
Dora's matriculation. The Bruckners went to Breitenstein to visit an
aunt, who is in a convalescent home, and so I could not go with them.
In the evening we went to Turkenschanz Park to supper, but there was
nothing on. By the way, I have not written anything yet about the
"innocent child" at the outing. On the boat she began fussing round
Hella and me and wanted to push into the conversation, indirectly of
course! But she did not succeed; Hella is extraordinarily clever in