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Early in the afternoon he brought the philologist to his hotel and asked him to rest there while he settled up his affairs at home.

'You are going to clean out my flat,' said Peter.

'Yes, yes.'

'You must not be surprised at the odious stench.'

George smiled: cowards incline to circumlocutions.

'I shall hold my nose.'

'Keep your eyes open! You may see ghosts.'

'I never see ghosts.'

'Maybe you'll see some all the same. Tell mc if you do!'

'Yes, yes.' How tasteless his jokes are!

I've a request for you.'

'And that is?'

'Don't talk to the caretaker! He's dangerous. He may attack you. Say a word which doesn't suit him, and he hits out at once. I don't 
want you to come to any harm on my account. He'll break all your bones. Every day he throws beggars out of the house; he injures them first. You don't know him. Promise me you won't have any contact with him! He's a liar. You should not believe anything he says.'

'I know, you've warned me already.'

'Promise me.'

'Yes, yes.'

'Even if he does nothing to you, he'll jeer at me later.'

So he's already afraid of the time he'll be alone again. 'You can be certain I'll get rid of him out of the house.'

'Truly?' Peter laughed, since his brother had known him, for the first time. He clutched for his pocket and handed George a bundle of crushed bank notes. 'He'll want money.'

'This is your entire fortune?'

'Yes. You'll find the rest in the flat in a more noble form.'

This last phrase almost made George sick. One half of their vast internal inheritance was locked up in dead tomes, the other in a unatic asylum. Which half had been the better used? He had expected to find at least some of the capital still with Peter. That wasn't the reason he was distressed, he said to himself; not because I shall have to support him for the rest of my life. His poverty annoys me because with this money I could have helped so many patients.

Then he left him alone. In the street he wiped his bands clean on his handkerchief. He would have wiped his forehead too; he had already lifted his hand when he remembered that similar gesture of Peter's. Hurriedly he dropped his hand again.

When he was once again outside the door of the flat he heard loud screams. Inside people were fighting. It would be all the easier for him to deal with them. At his violent ringing the woman opened the door. Her eyes were red and she was wearing the same comical skirt she had worn in the early morning.

'I ask you, Mr. Brother!' she shrieked, 'he's taking liberties! He pawned the books. It's not my fault, is it? Now he's going to tell the police of me. He can't do it, I tell you. I'm a respectable woman!'

George led her with elaborate politeness into one of the rooms. He offered her his arm. She clutched at it at once. In front of his brother's writing desk he asked her to take a seat. He himself set the chair for her.

'Make yourself comfortable!' he said. 'I hope you feel safe here. A woman like you should have every attention. Unhappily I am already married. You ought to have a business of your own. You are a born business woman. We shall not be interrupted here, I truste' He went to the communicating door and rattled at the lock. 'Locked, good. Would you very kindly lock the other door as well?'

She obeyed. He understood exactly how to turn himself at once into the owner, and the householder into his guest.

'My brother is unworthy of you. I have been talking to him. You must leave him! He wanted to report you for double adultery. He knows everything. But I have dissuaded him. A man like him would be deceived by every woman. I suspect that he is not in any case normal. All the same he might easily make you appear as the guilty party in a divorce. You would get nothing at all in that case. Then you would have nothing for all your sufferings with this wretched creature — I know just what he's like. You would have to pass your old age in poverty and loneliness. A respectable woman like you with a good thirty years before you yet. How old are you then? Not a day over forty? He has already secretly filed his petition. But I will take your part. You please me. You must leave the house at once. If he doesn't see you any more, he'll do no more against you. I'll buy you a dairy shop at the other end of the town. I shall put up the capital on one condition: you must never cross my brother's path again. If you should do so the capital which I am putting up will come back to me. You will sign an agreement to this effect. You will do well out of it. He wanted to have you shut up. He has the law on his side. The law is unjust. Why should a woman like you have to suffer because a few books are missingî I cannot allow it. Ah, if only I were not already married! Permit me, dear lady, as your brother-in-law, to kiss your hand. Tell me, if you will, exactly, what books are missing. I have taken it upon myself to replace them. Otherwise he would not have withdrawn his complaint. He is a cruel man. We will leave him to himself. Let him see how he gets on then. Not a soul will look after him. He has deserved it. If he commits any more follies then he'll only have himself to blame. Now he tries to blame everything on you. I shall see that the caretaker loses his job. He has taken liberties with you. From now on he can caretake in another house. You will soon marry again. You can be sure the whole world will envy you your new shop. A man would glady marry into that. You've got what a woman needs. Nothing is missing. Believe me! I'm a man of the world. Who else to-day is so particular about having everything clean as you are? Your skirt is something quite unusual. And your eyes! And your youth! And your little mouth! As I've said already if I were not married I'd try to seduce you! But I have a respect for my brother's wife. When I come here again later to keep an eye on that fool, I shall permit myself, if I may, to call on you in your dairy shop. Then you won't be his wife any longer. Then we'll let our hearts speak.'

He spoke with passion. Each word had the calculated effect. She changed colour. He paused after some sentences. Never before had he dared so much melodrama. She said nothing. He grasped that it was his presence which struck her dumb. He spoke so beautifully. She was afraid of missing a single word. Her eyes started out of their sockets, first with fear, then with love; she pricked her ears; water ran out of her mouth. The chair on which she sat creaked a popular tune. She held out her hands to him, folded into a cup. She drank with lips and hands. When he kissed her hands, the cup lost its shape and her lips breathed — he could hear it: more please. So he overcame his revulsion and kissed her hands again. She trembled; her emotion extended even to the roots of her hair. Had he embraced her she would have fainted. After his last sentence, the one about hearts, he remained fixed in a baroque attitude. Her hand and the greater part of his arm lay, ceremoniously, across his chest. She had, said she, savings. None of the books had gone altogether, she still had the pawn tickets. Ostentatiously and awkwardly she turned away — the shamefacedness of the shameless — and fetched out of her skirt, which presumably contained a pocket, a bundle of pawn tickets. Did he want her savings book too; She would give it him for love. He thanked her. For love too, he could not agree. Even while he was refusing she said, I ask you, who knows if you really deserve it. She regretted the offer before he accepted it. Would he come and see her for certain, he was what she called a man. She recovered her self-command by speaking these few words. But scarcely had he opened his mouth than she was his again.

Half an hour later she was helping him in his campaign against the caretaker. 'You can't know who I am!' shouted George in his face. 'The head of the Paris police, on vacation ! One word from me and my friend the head of the police here will have you arrested ! You'll lose your pension. I know everything you have on your conscience. Take a look at these pawn tickets ! I won't say a word about anything else for the present. Not a word from you! I know you through and through. You lead a double life. I am for taking drastic proceedings against anti-social elements. I shall ask my friend the head of your police to purge his forces. Leave this house! To-morrow morning early you'll be gone! You are a suspect! Put your luggage together and be off! I'll let you off with a 
caution for the time being. I shall exterminate you! You criminal! Do you know what you've donei It's being shouted from the roof-tops!'

Benedikt Pfaff, the stalwart ginger-headed tough, contracted his muscles, knelt down, folded his hands and implored the Head of the Police for forgiveness. His daughter had been ill, she would have died of her own accord anyway, he begged leave to recommend himself, and asked not to be sent away from his job. A man had nothing in the world except his peep-hole. What else had he left? You couldn't grudge him a beggar or two. Very few came nowadays, anyway ! The tenants were blown-out with affection for him. He had a bit of bad luck! If only he'd known! The Professor didn't look the kind of man who'd have had the head of the Paris police for his brother. He'd have had him met at the station and respectfully conducted home if he'd known ! God was reasonable. Thanking him, he permitted himself to stand up.

He was very well satisfied with the honour he had done the important gentleman. When he got up again he blinked at him in a friendly way. George remained curt and stern. But all the same he came halfway to meet him. Pfaff promised to redeem all the books he had pawned, in person, on the following morning. He was, however, to leave the house. At the far end of the town, close to the dairy shop bought for the woman, he was to be set up in the animal business; the two declared themselves ready to move in together. The woman made her own terms: she was not to be pinched or knocked about and she was to be allowed to receive the Professor's brother whenever he wanted. Pfaff agreed, flattered. He had his doubts about the prohibition on pinching. He was only human after all. But as well as committing themselves to mutual love, they were each to watch the other. If one or the other were to go wandering off in the direction of Ehrlich Strasse the other was immediately to inform Paris. In which case both shop and liberty would be ruthlessly removed. The very first information would be followed by arrest by telegraph. The informer could claim a reward. Pfaff didn't give a sh— for Ehrlich Strasse if he could live among a crowd of canary birds. Thérèse complained: Please he's doing it again. He mustn't always sh—. George spoke to him seriously about using the sort of language which was more suited to a better-class business man. He was no longer a miserable half-pay policeman, but a made man. Pfaff would sooner have been a publican, best of all a ring-master with a boxing turn of his own and tame canary birds which would sing at a word and shush down at a word. The Head of the Police gave him permission, if his business made so 
much profit and he behaved himself properly, to open a pub or a circus. Thérèse said no. A circus isn't respectable. A pub perhaps. They decided to divide the work. She would look after the pub, he would look after the circus. He was the master, she was the mistress. Clients and visitors from Paris were promised by the Head of the Police.

That very evening Thérèse began a thorough spring-cleaning of the flat. She engaged no outside help but did it all herself, so as to spare Mr. Brother needless expense: For the night, she made up her husband's bed with clean sheets and offered it to his brother. Hotels get more expensive every day. She was not afraid. Georges made his brother his excuse; he had to keep an eye on him. Pfaff withdrew for the last time to his little room; his last sleep, his dearest memory. Thérèse went on scrubbing all night.

Three days later the owner celebrated his homecoming. His first glance was for the little closet. It was empty ; where the peep-hole had been was only a desolate hole in the wall. Pfaff, the inventor, had broken up and carried off his patent. The library upstairs was intact. The communicating doors were flung open at right angles. Peter paced once or twice up and down before the writing desk. 'There are no stains on the carpets,' he said and smiled. 'If there were stains on them, I would burn them at once. I hate stains!' He pulled his manuscripts out of the drawers and piled them up on the writing desk. He read out the titles to George. *Work for years to come, my friend! And now I will show you the books.' Exclaiming, 'Here you see', and 'What do you think I have here?' with gloating glances and patient encouragement (not everyone has a dozen oriental languages all at his finger-ends), he hauled out books which only a short while before had been pawned, and explained their peculiarities to a willingly astounded brother. With uncanny speed the atmosphere changed; it rang with dates and textual references. Mere letters acquired a revolutionary significance. Dangerous misreadings were satisfactorily dealt with. Frivolous philologists were unmasked as monsters, who deserved only to be publicly pilloried in blue robes. Blue, this most ridiculous of colours, the colour of the uncritical, the credulous, the believers. A newly discovered language was proved to be one already well known, and its supposed discoverer an ass. Angry cries were heard against him. The man had dared, after a bare three years residence in the country, to come out with a work on the language there spoken! Even in the realms of scholarship the insolence of the self-made was on the increase. Scholarship should have its Inquisition, to which it could hand over heretics. There was no need, immediately to condemn them to burning at the stake. The legal independence of the priesthood in the Middle Ages had a great deal to be said for it. If only men of learning enjoyed such treatment to-day! A man of learning whose work may be of inestimable value can to-day be judged by a lay court for some small, perhaps unavoidable misdemeanour.