melancholy and meditative gentleman with the wild-flower in
his button-hole ... Tonio had sat with hot eyes at the foot of his
death-bed, sincerely and completely given over to a strong, mute
feeling, one of love and pain. And his mother too had knelt by the bed,
his beautiful, passionate mother, quite dissolved in hot tears;
whereupon she had strayed off to far-away lands with the southern
artist ... But back there, that smaller third room, now also completely
filled with books over which a needy-looking individual kept watch, had
been his own for many years. Thither he had returned after school, or
after such a walk as he had just taken; against that wall his table had
stood, in whose drawer he had treasured his first intimate and clumsy
verses ... The walnut-tree ... A piercing sadness quivered through him.
He looked sidewise through the window. The garden lay waste, but the
old walnut-tree stood in its place, heavily creaking and rustling in
the wind. And Tonio Kroeger let his eyes rove back upon the book he held
in his hands, a distinguished poetic work that he knew well. He looked
down upon these black lines and sentence-groups, followed for a space
the skilful flow of the text, watching it rise in creative passion to a
fine point and effect and then break off with equal effect ...

Yes, that is good work, he said, and put the volume back and turned
away. Then he saw that the official was still standing, winking his
eyes with an expression of mingled zeal and pensive distrust.

[Illustration: ARCO.]

"An excellent collection, I see," said Tonio Kroeger. "I have already
gained a general idea of it. I am much indebted to you. Good day." With
that he went out of the door; but it was a doubtful exit, and he
clearly felt that the official, full of disquiet at this visit, would
keep on standing and winking for a quarter of an hour.

He felt no inclination to penetrate farther. He had been at home.
Upstairs in the great rooms beyond the colonnade there were strangers
living, he could see; for the head of the stairs was shut off by a
glass door which had not formerly been there, and some name-plate or
other was on it. He went away, down the stairs and over the echoing
hall, and left his father's house. In one corner of a restaurant he
consumed a heavy, hearty meal, his thoughts ever turned inward, and
then he returned to the hotel.

"I am through," he said to the elegant gentleman in black. "I leave
this afternoon."