If he fled he would deliver Elisabeth defencelessly to that man, he would himself be one of those who hid in the labyrinth of the city and were afraid of the horses’ hoofs; and it would be not only an avowal of his guilt as a thief, it would mean also the renunciation for ever of his attempt to tear from that man the secret of his treachery. He must follow him farther, yet not surreptitiously like a spy, but openly as was fitting; and he would not keep Ruzena concealed either. So in the middle of the Stock Exchange quarter, though admittedly in the vicinity of the garrison band too, everything suddenly grew quiet round Joachim von Pasenow, as quiet and transparent as the clear blue sky which looked down between the two rows of buildings.

He had now a somewhat vague, yet urgent, wish to catch up the man and tell him that he was going to take Ruzena out of the casino and from now on make no secret about her; but he had taken only a few steps when he saw the other waddling hastily into the Stock Exchange. For a moment Joachim remained staring at the entrance: was this the place of metamorphosis? Would Bertrand himself come out now? He considered whether he should take Bertrand at once to meet Ruzena, and decided no: for Bertrand belonged to the world of the night clubs, and it was from that very world that he must now rescue Ruzena. But that would come all right; and how lovely it would be to forget all about it and wander with Ruzena in a still park beside a still lake. He stood still in front of the Stock Exchange. He longed for the country. The traffic roared round him; above him thundered the trains. He no longer stared at the passers-by, even though he felt that they were foreign and strange. He would avoid this neighbourhood in future. In the midst of the hubbub round the Stock Exchange Joachim von Pasenow held himself stiff and erect. He would be very good to Ruzena.

Bertrand paid him a visit of condolence, and Joachim was again not quite clear whether to regard this as considerate or presumptuous: one could take it as the one or the other. Bertrand remembered Helmuth, who had visited Culm occasionally, though seldom enough, and his memory was extraordinarily exact: “Yes, a fair, quiet youth, very reserved … I fancy he envied us … he couldn’t have changed much later either … and he resembled you.” That, now, was just a little too familiar again, almost as if Bertrand wished to exploit Helmuth’s death for his own advantage; however, it was no wonder if Bertrand remembered all that had to do with his former military career with such astonishing exactitude: one liked to recall happy times that one had lost. Yet Bertrand did not speak at all in a sentimental way, but quietly and soberly, so that Helmuth’s death assumed a more human and natural aspect, and in some way, under Bertrand’s touch, became objective, timeless and endurable. To his brother’s duel Joachim had not really devoted much thought; all the opinions that had been pronounced on it and the comments recurring again and again in the letters of condolence pointed in the same direction: that Helmuth had been tragically caught by the unalterable fatality of his sense of honour, from which there was no escape. Bertrand however began:

“The most extraordinary thing is that we live in a world of machinery and railways, and that at the same time as the railways are running and the factories working two people can stand opposite each other and shoot at each other.”

Bertrand had no sense of honour left, Joachim told himself, and yet his remarks seemed natural and illuminating. But Bertrand went on:

“That may be, of course, because it’s a question of sentiment.”

“The sentiment of honour,” said Joachim.

“Yes, honour and so forth.”

Joachim looked up—was Bertrand laughing at him again? He would have liked to reply that one must not judge such things merely from the standpoint of the city man; out there in the country people’s feelings were less artificial and meant more. Really Bertrand did not know anything about it. But of course one could not say such things to one’s guest, and Joachim silently held out his cigar-case. But Bertrand drew his English pipe and leather tobacco-pouch from his pocket:

“It’s extraordinary that it should be the most superficial and perishable things that are actually the most persistent. Physically a human being can adapt himself with incredible quickness to new conditions of life. But even his skin and the colour of his hair are more persistent than his bony structure.”

Joachim regarded Bertrand’s fair skin and far too wavy hair and waited to see where all this was going to lead.

Bertrand noticed at once that he had not made himself clear enough:

“Well, the most persistent things in us are, let us say, our so-called feelings. We carry an indestructible fund of conservatism about with us. I mean our feelings, or rather conventions of feeling, for actually they aren’t living feelings, but atavisms.”

“So you consider that conservative principles are atavistic?”

“Oh, sometimes, but not always. However, I wasn’t really thinking of them. What I meant was that our feelings always lag half-a-century or a full century behind our actual lives. One’s feelings are always less human than the society one lives in. Just consider that a Lessing or a Voltaire accepted without question the fact that in their time men were still broken on the wheel—a thing that to us with our feelings is unimaginable. And do you imagine that we are in a different case?”

Well, Joachim had never bothered his head over such things. Perhaps Bertrand was right.