Bewildered, the deputy backed off a step and found his chair; he had turned white as a sheet and could say nothing, like the rest. He was all agape.

“I repeat,” Nagel went on, in a loud, deliberate voice, “that I’ll give you ten kroner if you throw your glass into that cub’s face. I’m holding the money right here, in my hand. You shouldn’t worry about the consequences.” And, in fact, Nagel did hold out a ten-krone bill so Miniman could see it.

But Miniman behaved very strangely. He immediately slipped away to a corner of the café, running with short, crooked steps, and sat down there without answering. His head bowed, he looked furtively in every direction, repeatedly pulling up his knees as if terrified.

Then the door opened and the hotel keeper came back in. He began puttering with his own things by the counter and paid no attention to what was going on around him. Only when the deputy jumped up and raised both his arms with a furious, nearly voiceless yell in front of Nagel, did he notice and ask, “What on earth—?”

But nobody answered. The deputy gave a couple of wild blows, but each time ran up against Nagel’s fists. He was getting nowhere. Goaded on by his bad luck, he foolishly beat the air as if trying to fight off the world, until he finally lurched sideways toward the tables, tumbled against a stool and fell to his knees. He breathed heavily, and his whole figure was altered beyond recognition by rage; what’s more, he had numbed his arms knocking against that pair of sharp fists shooting up wherever he gave a blow. At this point pandemonium broke loose in the café; the peasant woman and her party fled toward the exits, while the rest yelled in chorus and tried to intervene. Finally the deputy gets on his legs again and walks up to Nagel, stops and screams, his hands extended straight in front of him—screams in ludicrous despair at not finding the right words, “You confounded—you damn dude—oh, go to hell!”

Nagel looked at him and smiled, walked over to the table, picked up the deputy’s hat and handed it to him with a bow. The deputy snatched his hat and, in his rage, was about to fling it back, but thought better of it and slammed it on his head. Then he turned on his heel and left the room. There were two big dents in his hat as he left, giving him a comical appearance.

Now the hotel keeper pushed forward and demanded an explanation. Turning to Nagel, he grabbed his arm and said, “What’s going on here? What’s the meaning of all this?”

“Oh, please, don’t grab me by the arm,” Nagel answered, “I won’t run away. Besides, nothing is going on here; I insulted the man who just left and he tried to defend himself. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Everything is all right.”

But the hotel keeper was irate and stamped his feet. “No ruckus here!” he cried, “no ruckus! If you want to have a brawl, go out into the street, in here I just won’t have it. Have the people gone out of their minds?”

“That’s well and good!” a couple of the guests cut in, “but we saw the whole thing!” And with people’s inclination to agree with the victor of the moment, they unconditionally side with Nagel. They explained it all to the hotel keeper.

Nagel himself shrugged his shoulders and walked over to Miniman. Without any preliminaries, he asked the little gray-haired fool, “What’s the relationship between you and that deputy, since he can treat you that way?”

“Oh, forget it!” Miniman replies. “There’s no relationship at all between us, he’s a stranger to me. I only danced for him once in Market Square, for ten øre. Anyway, he always makes fun of me.”

“So you dance for people and charge a fee for it?”

“Yes, now and then. But it doesn’t happen very often, only when I need the money and can’t get my hands on ten øre any other way.”

“And what do you use the money for?”

“I need money for many things. In the first place, I’m a stupid man; I’m not very smart and it isn’t easy for me. When I was a sailor and supported myself, things were better in every way; but then I was injured—I fell from the rigging and ruptured myself, and since then I’ve had a hard time managing.