Kreisler’s thoughts dashed and stunned themselves against this waiter. His mind stood stock-still for several minutes. This pink wooden face paralysed everything. As its owner thought “the young man” was having a joke with him, it became still more humorously wooden. The more wooden it became, the more paralysed became Kreisler’s intelligence. He stared at him more and more oddly, till the _garçon_ was forced to laugh. As a matter of fact, Kreisler mentally was steadying himself on this hard personality. As he had appeared to walk deliberately with hot intention to his seat, so he seemed gazing deliberately at the waiter and choosing his drink. Then the dam gave way. He hated this familiar face; his thought smashed and buffeted it. Such commercial modicum of astute good nature was too much. It was kindness that only equilibrium could ignore. The expression of his own face became distorted. The _garçon_ fixed him with his eye and took a step back, with dog-like doubt, behind the next table. Anastasya had smiled in a very encouraging way as he passed. This had offended him extremely. Soltyk—Anastasya; Soltyk—Anastasya. That was a bad coupling! His sort of persecution mania seized him by the throat. This had done it! Soltyk, who had got hold of Volker and was the something that had interfered between that borrowable quantity and himself, occupied a position not unsimilar to his stepmother. Volker and his father, who had kept him suspended in idleness, and who now both were withdrawing or had withdrawn like diminishing jets of water, did not attract the full force of his indolent, tragic grumpiness. Behind Ernst and his parent Soltyk and his stepmother stood. A certain lonely and comic ego all people carry about with them, who is always dumb except when they get drunk or become demented. It then talks, never sincerely, but in a sort of representative, pungent way. This ego in Kreisler’s case would not have been shameless and cynical if it had begun to grumble about Volker. It would have said, “Hang that little Ernst! I come to Paris, I am ashamed to say, partly for him. But the little swine-dog has given me the go-by. Hell take his impudence! I don’t like that swine-dog Soltyk! He’s a slimy Russian rascal!” It would not have said: “I’ve lost the access to Ernst’s pocket. The pig-dog Soltyk is sitting there!” In any case his vanity too was hurt. Anastasya now provided him with an acceptable platform from which his vexation might spring at Soltyk. There was no money or insignificant male liaison to stuff him down into grumpiness. “Das Weib” was there. All was in order for unbounded inflammation.