remarked, "she is at home, for we have just accompanied her there."—"Is that so?" said Buck, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, there is always plenty of time to see her," he added indifferently. "For the present I am delighted to meet you again. Our talk in Berlin, the only one, I think was so … stimulating."
Diederich now confessed to a similar recollection, though at the time it had merely annoyed him. This meeting had quite cheered him up. "Indeed, I still owe you a return visit, but you know how in Berlin so many things turn up to prevent one. Here, at all events, one has leisure. Dull, though, isn't it? And to think that we must waste our lives here"—and Diederich pointed up to the row of bleak houses. Wolfgang Buck sniffed the air with his gently retrousse nose, he seemed to taste it on his full lips and he assumed a thought ful expression. "A lifetime in Netzig," he began slowly, "well, it all depends. People like us are not in a position to live only for excitement. In every case, there is some here." He smiled suspiciously. "That sentry created some excitement which reached the most exalted circles."
"Oh, I see"—Diederich protruded his paunch—"you want to tease me again. I insist that I am absolutely on the side of His Majesty in that affair."
Buck swept this aside with a gesture. "Don't try that on me. I know all about him."
"I know him even better," Diederich declared. "Any one who has stood alone with him, face to face, as I did in the Tiergarten last February, after the big riot, and has seen those eyes flashing, that truly imperial glance—can have no doubts as to our future."
"No doubts as to the future … because a man's eyes flashed!" Buck's mouth and jaws fell pessimistically. Diederich snorted impatiently. "Of course, I know, you do not believe in any personality of this era. Otherwise you would have become a Lassalle or a Bismarck."
