“I did not go with you from such a motive.” “Well, what for then?” The gentleman was talking crazy again. He had a way of trying to make people drunk with talk. “Do you live in this house?” Christian asked. Yes, he lived there. Maybe the gentleman would like to look at the stinking hole? Right ahead then. He himself wouldn’t stay upstairs long. He just wanted to fix himself up a little more neatly and then go to Gottlieb’s Inn. That was a better class café with girlies and champagne. He was going to treat to fifteen or twenty bottles to-day. Why not--since he had the brass? But first he’d have to go to Grünbusch’s to pawn something. Maybe all that’d bore the gentleman; and maybe not, eh? These words he snarled out in his rage on the dark stairs; but beneath his rage seethed a hell of terror. The light of a street-lamp close by his window threw a pale, greenish light into the room, and saved Niels Heinrich the trouble of lighting a lamp. He pointed to it and remarked with a snicker that to have one’s lighting at public expense was pure gain. He could read his paper in bed and didn’t even have to blow out the lamp before going to bed. That showed you how a man had to live who wasn’t without brains and might have gotten ahead in the world. It was a lousy, stinking hole. But now things would change; he was going to move to the Hotel Adlon and have a room with a private bath, and buy his linen at the Nürnberger Bazaar. He put his hand in his pocket, and a clinking could be heard. Christian took his words for incoherent babble and did not answer. Niels Heinrich tore off his crumpled collar, and threw his coat and waistcoat on the bed. He opened a drawer and then a wardrobe, and with astonishing dexterity put on a clean collar, so tall that it seemed to enclose his neck in a white tube, tied a cravat of yellow silk, and slipped into a striped waistcoat and a morning coat. These things looked new, and contrasted absurdly with the stained, checked trousers which, for some reason, he did not change for others. The cuffs of his shirt were also soiled. “Well, then why?” Suddenly he asked again, and his eyes flickered rabidly in the greenish light. “Why in hell do you stick to me like a leech?” “I need you,” answered Christian, who had remained near the door. “You need me? What for? Don’t understand. Talk plain, man, talk plain!”