It is raining in Salzburg. We park the car at the Österreichischer Hof, where we plan to spend the night. There are almost no people about. I have trouble finding a porter at the hotel to carry our bags from the car. No one cares to show his face—and if he does so, then sullenly. Something is in the air.

Stella asks for a newspaper. We learn about the murder of the German official vom Rath in Paris and about the spontaneous reaction of the German people, who have avenged themselves on Jewish stores, homes, and synagogues.

On our way through town, we occasionally step on fragments of glass. The huge panes of a dress-shop window have been smashed. In the ruined display, a mannequin has been stood on its head, naked. Some wag has thrust a chicken-feather duster between the legs. An SA man, with a grim chin strap around his extortionist face, is guarding the artwork. His eyes follow us like those of a distrustful watchdog as we pass by so closely that we almost graze him. He gapes at the small blue-yellow-and-red Romanian flags in the buttonholes of our raincoats.

We are expected for dinner at the home of Stella’s cousin, who has been living here for many years, married to an official in the provincial government. No one (least of all he) has any illusions that he will keep his job with a Jewish wife. She does not, incidentally, look at all Jewish. She has nothing of Stella’s thorough-bred looks; she is blond and rather plain. What makes her attractive is a fine touch of sorrow, mildly set off by diligent kindness and friendliness (“an incredibly dear dumb goose,” says Stella).

The husband is the prototype of the former Austro-Hungarian civil servant, the son of a privy councilor, the grandson of a department head, a man of jittery, almost servile politesse behind which he absentmindedly thinks of something completely different. He is dry and yet no doubt profoundly sentimental, much more intelligent, much quicker, and also wittier than he cares to seem, likewise much more reserved and arrogant. (Stella says, “At first glance a milksop, but at second glance he’s full of surprises.”)

They both adore Stella and treat her like a princess who occasionally deigns to step down to them from her grand world. They emphasize their modest provincialism with an insistence that is not without a certain irony, especially since their allegation so sharply contradicts the discreet refinement of their household, the exquisite food, which is limited to the most traditional dishes of the Viennese cuisine, the collection of choice and lovely peasant furniture and other folk art in their home, and their extraordinary musicality and knowledge of literature.

They have cooked up an explanation for my constantly being with Stella and whisper it to anyone who might be surprised at my hanging around her. They say that I am probably John’s son; in any case, he was more than just close to my late mother. Of course, they do not hide the truth from themselves about the nature of my relationship with Stella and about the circumstance that John could not have been the only candidate for my beautiful mother’s favor and thus for the possibility of fathering me—indeed, he would have to share his candidacy with a good dozen other gentlemen of his age group and financial position (including, last but not least, “Uncle” Ferdinand). However, Stella’s kinfolk merely require an alibi to be as kind, as amiable, and as overpolite to me as to anyone whom convention does not force them to reject.