ringily, turn on his left foot, snap the toe of his
right foot sidewise off the floor, and glide away with swaying hips.

One went out of the door backward and bowing when one left a company;
one did not bring up a chair by seizing one leg of it, or dragging it
along the floor, but one carried it lightly by the back and set it down
noiselessly. One did not stand with hands folded on the--pardon!--belly,
and the tongue thrust into the cheek; but if one did so none the less,
M. Knaak had such a fashion of doing likewise that one preserved for
the rest of his days a loathing for this attitude.

This was deportment. But as for dancing, M. Knaak mastered that in
still higher degree, if possible. In the empty salon the gas-flames of
the chandelier and the candles on the mantle-piece were burning. The
floor was strewn with soapstone, and the pupils stood about in a mute
semicircle. Beyond those portieres, in the adjoining room, sat the
mothers and aunts in plush chairs, surveying M. Knaak through their
lorgnettes, as he bowed forward, grasped the hem of his frock-coat with
two fingers of each hand, and with springy legs demonstrated the
various steps of the mazurka. But when he had a mind to completely
startle his audience, he would suddenly and without cogent reason leap
high in the air, cut pigeon-wings with bewildering rapidity, trilling
with his feet, so to say, whereupon he would return to this earth with
a muffled thud which, however, shook everything to its foundations.

"What an incomprehensible monkey!" thought Tonio Kroeger. But he saw
clearly that Inga Holm, the merry Inga, often followed M. Knaak's
movements with a self-forgetful smile, and this was not the only reason
why all this wonderfully controlled corporosity did at bottom wrest
from him something like admiration. How peaceful and unperplexed M.
Knaak's eyes were! They did not penetrate to the point where matters
grow complex and mournful; they knew nothing save that they were brown
and beautiful. But that was why his bearing was so haughty. Yes, you
must be stupid in order to walk like him; and then you would be loved
because you were amiable. He comprehended so readily that Inga,
fair-haired, sweet Inga, looked upon M. Knaak as she did. But would
never a maiden look thus upon himself?

Oh yes, that happened. There was Magdalen Vermehren, lawyer Vermehren's
daughter, with the gentle mouth and the large, dark, shining eyes full
of seriousness--and sentime