By doing what he is doing, he too has played straight into my hands, but I am certainly not as indifferent to his fate as I am to Basini’s. His mother has no great fortune, you know; so if he’s thrown out of the school, all his plans are at an end. If he starts from here he can make something of himself, but otherwise he would have little chance. And Reiting has never liked me ... do you understand? ... he has always hated me ... he used to try to do me harm whenever he could ... I think he’d even be happy if he could get rid of me today. Now do you see all the things I can do by possessing this secret? ...’

Törless was frightened, and strangely so, as though Reiting’s fate also applied to him. He looked in terror at Beineberg. Beineberg had narrowed his eyes to a slit, and looked like a big, sinister spider, lying quietly in wait in its web. To Törless’s ears his final words sounded cold and clear, like a decree.

He had not followed what had gone before, and had known only this: Beineberg is talking about his own ideas again, and they have nothing to do with the issue at hand ... and now, all of a sudden, he didn’t know how it had happened.

The web that had begun somewhere out in a world of abstraction, as he recalled, must suddenly have contracted with fabulous speed. For all of a sudden it was now concrete, real, alive, and there was a head wriggling in it ... its throat snared shut.

He didn’t like Reiting at all, but he now remembered the charming, impudent, free-and-easy manner with which he set up his intrigues, while Beineberg, on the other hand, struck him as shameful, quiet and grinning as he contracted his many-threaded, loathsome grey cocoon of ideas around the other boy.

Törless involuntarily lashed out at him: ‘You can’t use it against him.’ His constant, secret distaste for Beineberg might also have played a part in it.

But after a moment’s reflection Beineberg said, of his own accord, ‘Why should I? It really would be a pity where he was concerned. In any case, he’s not a threat to me any more, and he’s too valuable to be allowed to come unstuck over something so stupid.’ That was that side of things dealt with. But Beineberg went on talking, and returned to Basini’s fate.

‘Do you still think we should report Basini?’ But Törless didn’t reply. He wanted to hear Beineberg speaking, his words sounded to him like the echo of footsteps on hollow earth, and he wanted to enjoy that situation to the full.

Beineberg pursued his thoughts further. ‘I think we’ll keep him to ourselves for the time being and carry out our own punishment. Because he must be punished - for his arrogance if nothing else. The school authorities would expel him at most, and write a long letter to his uncle — you know how businesslike they are about such things. Your Excellency, your nephew has let himself down ... bad company ... return him to your care ... hope that you will succeed .. path of improvement ... impossible for the time being to be with other boys ... etc. Does a case like that hold any interest or value for them?’

‘And what sort of value would it have for us?’

‘What sort of value? None for you, perhaps, because you’re going to be a government official, or perhaps a poet - you don’t need it, maybe you’re even scared of it. But I have different plans for my life!’

This time Törless started listening.

‘Basini has value for me - very great value, in fact.