was all this that glowed so darkly and
painfully under the ashes of his weariness, without becoming a clear
flame? Hush, hush, and not a word! No words! Fain would he have spent a
long time walking thus in the wind through the dim, dreamily familiar
streets. But everything was so cramped and so close together. It took
no time to reach one's goal.

In the upper city there were arc-lights and they were just beginning to
glow. There was the hotel, and there were the two black lions before it
that had frightened him so as a child. They still looked at each other
just as if they were about to sneeze; but they seemed to have grown
much smaller since that day.--Tonio Kroeger passed between them.

As he came on foot, he was received without much ceremony. The porter
and a very elegant gentleman in black who received the guests, and who
was forever thrusting either cuff back into its sleeve with his little
finger, surveyed him searchingly and critically from his crown to his
boots in the visible effort to make something of a social diagnosis of
him, to determine his civil and religious classification, and to assign
to him some definite place in their esteem, without, however, being
able to reach a satisfying result; wherefore they resolved upon a
moderate politeness. A waiter, a mild-mannered creature with light
blond strips of side-whiskers, a dress-coat shiny with age-, and
rosettes on his noiseless shoes, led him up two flights to a room
furnished neatly and patriarchally, whose window opened up in the
twilight a picturesque and medieval prospect of courts, gables, and the
bizarre masses of the church near which the hotel stood. Tonio Kroeger
stood awhile at this window; then he seated himself with folded arms on
the rambling sofa, drew his eyebrows together, and whistled to himself.

Lights were brought, and his baggage came. At the same time the
mild-mannered waiter laid the registry blank on the table, and Tonio
Kroeger dashed off on it with head on one side something that looked
like name, station, and birth-place. Hereupon he ordered something for
supper, and continued to look into space from his sofa-corner. When the
food stood before him, he left it untouched for a long time, but
finally took a few bites and then walked up and down his room for an
hour, standing still from time to time and shutting his eyes. Then he
undressed with sluggish movements and went to bed. He slept long, amid
confused dreams full of strang