"The train, my dear Botho, stops here only three minutes, but I will make the best use I can of the time, and in case of need I will write, well or ill as it happens, when the train is in motion. I am travelling with a very charming young banker's wife, Madame Salinger, nee Saling, from Vienna. When I wondered at the similarity of the names, she said: 'Yes, it looks as if I had married my own comparative.' She talks like that right straight along, and in spite of having a ten-year-old daughter (blonde; the mother is brunette) she too is going to Schlangenbad. And she is going by way of Cologne too, like me, because of a visit that she is to make there. The child has naturally a good disposition, but is not well brought up and has already broken my parasol by her constant climbing about in the railway carriage, a mishap which embarrassed her mother very much. The railroad station, where we are just now stopping (that is to say, the train is starting again this very moment), is swarming with soldiers, among them Brandenburg Cuirassiers with a name in yellow letters on their shoulder straps; apparently it was Nicholas. It looked very well. There were fusiliers there too, from the thirty-fifth, little people, who seemed to me far too small, although Uncle Osten always used to say the best fusilier was one who could not be seen with the naked eye. But I will close. The little girl, alas, is running from one window to the other as before and makes it hard for me to write. And besides she is constantly munching cakes, little pastry tarts with cherries and pistachio nuts on top. She began that long ago, between Potsdam and Werder. The mother is too weak. I would be more severe." Botho laid the card aside and ran through the second one as well as he could. It ran: "Hannover, 12-30.