up her red hands to advantage on the
white table-cloth. A short-necked old gentleman with ice-gray sailor's
beard and dark-blue face was there, a fish-dealer from the capital, who
understood German. He seemed to be wholly stopped up as to nose, and
inclined to apoplexy, for he drew short, jerky breaths and raised from
time to time his beringed forefinger to one of his nostrils, in order
to shut it and procure the other one a little air by means of vigorous
snorting. None the less he paid constant court to the brandy bottle,
which stood before him at breakfast as well as at the other meals.
There was no one else except three tall American youths with their don
or tutor, who silently adjusted his glasses and played football with
them by day. They parted their reddish yellow hair in the middle and
had long, impassive faces.

"Please, give me the wurst-things there,"[A] the one would say.

[Footnote A: Mr. Mann's English.--TRANSLATOR.]

"That's not wurst, that's schinken," remarked another, and this was the
only contribution which either they or the tutor made to the
conversation; for otherwise they sat in silence and drank hot water.

Tonio Kroeger would have desired no other sort of company at table. He
enjoyed his peace, listened to the Danish gutturals and the bright and
dark vowels, when the fish-dealer and the hostess occasionally
conversed together, exchanged now and then with the former some simple
remark about the barometer, and would then get up to pass through the
verandah and down on to the shore again, where he had already spent
long morning hours.

Sometimes it was quiet and summerlike there. The sea would rest lazily
and smoothly, in blue, bottle-green, and reddish streaks, with silvery,
glittering reflections playing over it, while the seaweed dried into
hay in the sunshine, and the jelly-fish lay there and evaporated. It
smelled a little of decay and also of the pitch of the fishing-boat
against which Tonio Kroeger leaned his back as he sat on the sand,
turning so as to have the open horizon and not the Swedish coast before
his eyes; but the light breath of the sea floated pure and fresh over
everything.

And gray, stormy days came. The waves bowed their heads like steers
lowering their horns to butt, and rushed furiously against the strand,
which was flooded to a great height and covered with shining sea-grass,
shells, and driftwood. Between the long lines of wave-crests the pale
green, foam-fle