A little veranda, with a roof supported on wooden pillars and overgrown with wild grape-vines, had been built out into the lake. A table and a few garden-chairs stood upon it, and from it one could look far away over the beautiful, unruffled water and the distant mountains. At night it was delicious to lean over the balustrade and see the moon and stars dancing in the waves. The nights were still warm, and the scent of the roses was wafted over from the garden; on a day like this one could sit in the open air until midnight. Fat Rossel had seated himself in an American rocking-chair, with his back toward the lake; a narghili stood by his side, and on the table, in a cooler, was a bottle of Rhine wine, from which he filled his own and his friend's glass from time to time. Kohle sat opposite him, his elbows resting on the table, his shabby black hat pulled down over his forehead, from beneath which his eyes gleamed fixedly and earnestly out of the shadow like those of some night-bird. They appeared to be magically attracted by the lines of silver that furrowed the lake, and it was only when he spoke that he slowly raised them to the level of his friend's high, white forehead, from which the fez was pushed back. Rossel wore his Persian dressing gown, and his silky black beard hung picturesquely down upon his breast. Even in the moonlight Kohle looked very shabby in comparison with him, like a dervish by the side of an emir. The truth was, Kohle had but one coat for all times of the day and year. "You may say what you like, my dear friend," said Fat Rossel, concluding a rather long dispute about the difference in character between the North and South Germans--he himself was from Passau and Kohle from Erfurth--"there is one talent you people on the other side of the Main are lacking in; you can swim excellently, but you can't lie on your back and let yourself drift. Didn't I drag you put here to this tiresome summer retreat because your aspect had become positively unbearable to a flesh-painter, your skin having dried to a respectable parchment, and you standing in danger of composing yourself into an early grave? And now you don't do anything better out here; but consume one yard of paper after another, while the shadows in your face grow blacker from day to day. Why are you in such haste, my dear Kohle, to produce things for which no one in the world is waiting?" Kohle's pale face never moved a muscle. He slowly drank a few drops of wine from his glass, and then said, calmly: "Forbid the silkworm to spin!" "You forget, my dear godfather, that the worm you cite as your model has at least the excuse that it spins silk. If you could get so far as to do that, the thing would have a practical purpose. But your spinning--"