A walk followed, to warm oneself up, along the beach to Sea-gull Rock or Ocean Temple, a little lunch by the beach-chair; then the time came to go up to one’s room for an hour’s rest, before making a toilette for the table-d’hôte. The table-d’hôte was very gay, for this was a good season at the baths, and the great dining-room was filled with acquaintances of the Buddenbrooks, Hamburg families, and even some Russians and English people. A black-clad gentleman sat at a tiny table and served the soup out of a silver tureen. There were four courses, and the food tasted nicer and more seasoned than that at home, and many people drank champagne. These were the single gentlemen who did not allow their business to keep them chained in town all the week, and who got up some little games of roulette after dinner: Consul Peter Döhlmann, who had left his daughter at home, and told such extremely funny stories that the ladies from Hamburg laughed till their sides ached and they begged him for mercy; Senator Dr. Cremer, the old Superintendent of Police; Uncle Christian, and his friend Dr. Gieseke, who was also without his family, and paid everything for Uncle Christian. After dinner, the grown-ups drank coffee under the awnings of the pastry-shop, and the band played, and Hanno sat on a chair close to the steps of the pavilion and listened unwearied. He was settled for the afternoon. There was a shooting-gallery in the Kurgarden, and at the right of the Swiss cottage were the stables, with horses and donkeys, and the cows whose foaming, fragrant milk one drank warm every evening. One could go walking in the little town or along the front; one could go out to the Prival in a boat and look for amber on the beach, or play croquet in the children’s playground, or listen to Ida Jungmann reading aloud, sitting on a bench on the wooded hillside where hung the great bell for the table-d’hôte. But best of all was it to go back to the beach and sit in the twilight on the end of the breakwater, with your face turned to the open horizon. Great ships passed by, and you signalled them with your handkerchief; and you listened to the little waves slapping softly against the stones; and the whole space about you was filled with a soft and mighty sighing. It spoke so benignly to little Johann! it bade him close his eyes, it told him that all was well. But just then Ida would say, “Come, little Hanno. It’s supper-time. We must go. If you were to sit here and go to sleep, you’d die.” How calm his heart felt, how evenly it beat, after a visit to the sea! Then he had his supper in his room--for his mother ate later, down in the glass verandah--and drank milk or malt extract, and lay down in his little bed, between the soft old linen sheets, and almost at once sleep overcame him, and he slept, to the subdued rhythm of the evening concert and the regular pulsations of his quiet heart.