The Captain took very detailed care of this department, and Eduard let fall the remark that a case of this sort had in the strangest way made an epoch in his friend’s life. But when the Captain was silent and seemed to be finding the recollection of it unpleasant, Eduard checked himself and Charlotte too, who was in general no less informed about it, paid no attention to what he had said.

‘We have done well to make all these arrangements,’ the Captain said one evening, ‘but we still lack what we need most, which is an able man who knows how to use them. I can suggest for this post a field-surgeon I know who can be had on tolerable terms, an excellent man in his trade and one who has oftentimes treated me for serious internal troubles too, and better than a specialist might have done; and immediate aid is, after all, what is most seriously missed in the country.’

The man was immediately written to and Eduard and Charlotte were glad to have been enabled to use so well so much money they might otherwise have frittered away.

Thus Charlotte too exploited the Captain and she began to be very content he should be there and not at all worried about any consequences that might ensue. When she met him she usually had a number of questions in her head to ask him. She liked being alive and so she sought to do away with anything that might be harmful or deadly: the lead-glazing on the earthenware crockery and the verdigris that formed on copper pots had worried her for a long time and she had him instruct her about this and the instruction had naturally to begin with the fundamental principles of physics and chemistry.

Chance but welcome opportunity for talking about these things was offered by Eduard’s taste for reading aloud. He had a very melodious deep voice and had in earlier days been well-received and well-known for his lively and sensitive recitation of oratory and poetry. Now it was other subjects that engaged him and other books from which he read, and as it happened these had for some time been principally works on physics, chemistry and technical matters.

A particular trait of his, but one which perhaps he was not alone in, was that he could not bear someone else looking over at a book when he was reading from it. In earlier times, when he read poems, plays and stories, it was the natural consequence of the desire, possessed as much by a reciter as by a poet, an actor or a story-teller, to evoke surprise, to vary the pace, to arouse tension; and it militates very greatly against these intended effects if a third party is already looking ahead and knows what is coming. This was one reason it was his practice when reading before company to sit so that he had no one behind him. Now that there was only the three of them this precaution was unnecessary, and since his objective was no longer to stir the emotions or startle the imagination he did not think about being particularly careful.

Only, one evening when he had sat down without thinking about where, he noticed Charlotte was reading over his shoulder. His old impatience came to life again and he rebuked her for it rather roughly, saying bad habits of that kind, like so many others that were an annoyance to society, ought to be broken once and for all. ‘If I read aloud to someone,’ he said, ‘is it not as if I were speaking to him and telling him something? What has been written down and printed takes the place of my own mind and my own heart; and would I ever take the trouble to speak at all if a window were constructed in my forehead or in my chest, so that he to whom I want to expound my thoughts one by one, or convey my feelings one by one, could always know long in advance what I was getting at? Whenever anyone reads over my shoulder it is as if I were being torn in two.’

Charlotte, whose address in great or intimate society was revealed especially in her ability to circumvent any unpleasant, forcible, or even merely lively remark and to interrupt a conversation that was going on too long and stimulate one in danger of breaking down, was quite equal to this occasion. ‘You will forgive me, I know,’ she said, ‘when I confess the reason for my error. I heard you speak of ‘affinity,’ and straightway there came into my mind my own affinity, a pair of cousins who happen to be troubling me at this very moment. I attend again to your reading; I hear that what is being spoken of is quite inanimate things, and I look over your shoulder to find out where I am.’

‘It is a metaphor which has misled and confused you,’ said Eduard. ‘Here, to be sure, it is only a question of soil and minerals; but man is a true Narcissus: he makes the whole world his mirror.’

‘Very true,’ the Captain continued: ‘that is how he treats everything he discovers outside himself; his wisdom and his folly, his will and his caprices, he lends to the beasts, the plants, the elements and the gods.’

‘As I do not wish to lead you too far away from the present subject,’ Charlotte said, ‘I wonder if you would tell me just briefly what is actually meant here by affinities?’

‘Very gladly,’ replied the Captain, to whom Charlotte had directed the question, ‘as well as I can from what I learned from reading about it some ten years ago. Whether the scientific world still thinks of it in the same way, or whether it agrees with the latest theories, I cannot say.’

‘It is a great annoyance,’ cried Eduard, ‘that one can no longer learn anything once and for all. Our ancestors observed their whole life long the instruction they received in their youth; but we have to learn anew every five years if we do not want to fall completely out of fashion.’

‘We women are not so particular about that,’ said Charlotte; ‘and, to be frank, all I am really interested in is knowing what the word means; for nothing makes you look so silly in society as to misapply an unfamiliar coinage. That is why all I want to know is in what sense this expression is employed in the present context. Let us leave what its scientific status may be to the scientists, who are in any case, as I have been able to observe, hardly ever in agreement.’

‘But where shall we begin, so as to get to the point with the least delay?’ Eduard asked the Captain after a pause. The Captain, having thought it over, replied: ‘If I may be allowed to go what will seem a long way back, we shall soon get to the point.’

‘I am all attention, you may be sure,’ said Charlotte, laying aside her work.

And the Captain began: ‘In all the phenomena of nature of which we are aware, the first thing we observe is that they adhere to themselves. It sounds odd, I know, to expound something that goes without saying; but it is only when we have fully comprehended what is already known that we can go forward together into the unknown.’

‘I should think,’ Eduard interrupted, ‘that examples will make the matter clearer to her, and to us. If you think of water, or oil, or quicksilver, you will find a unity and coherence of their parts. They will not relinquish this unified state except through the action or force of some other agent. If this is removed, they immediately come together again.’

‘Unquestionably,’ Charlotte said, agreeing. ‘Raindrops like to join together into streams. And even as children we play with quicksilver, and see in amazement how we can separate it into little balls and then let it run together again.’

‘And therefore I may mention in passing this significant point,’ the Captain added, ‘that this unalloyed adherence made possible by liquidity is always definitely distinguished by the spherical form. The falling water-drop is round; you yourself have spoken of little balls of quicksilver; indeed, a falling drop of molten lead, if it has time completely to solidify, arrives in the form of a ball.’

‘Let me hurry on,’ said Charlotte, ‘and see whether I have guessed aright what you are coming to. Just as each thing has an adherence to itself, so it must also have a relationship to other things.’

‘And that will differ according to the difference between them,’ Eduard hurriedly went on. ‘Sometimes they will meet as friends and old acquaintances who hasten together and unite without changing one another in any way, as wine mixes with water.