“You’re probably right,” Agathe conceded.

He looked at her. He realized that this encounter meant more to his sister than any of the courting she had experienced since she had been under his protection. He even knew this man slightly. Lindner was a public figure; he was the man who at the very first session of the Parallel Campaign had made that brief speech, received with embarrassing silence, concerning the “historic occasion” or something like that: awkward, sincere, and mediocre . . . Inadvertently Ulrich looked around; but he did not recall having noticed the man among the guests, and now he realized that Lindner had never been invited back. He must have run into him elsewhere from time to time, probably at some learned society, and have read one or another of his publications, for as he collected his memory, ultramicroscopic traces of images from the past condensed like a viscous, repulsive drop into the verdict: “That insipid ass! If one wants to maintain a certain elevation in one’s state of being, one cannot take such a person any more seriously than Professor Hagauer!”

He said this to Agathe.

Agathe responded with silence. She even pressed his hand.

He had the feeling: Something here makes no sense at all, but there’s no way to stop it.

At this moment people came into the anteroom, and the siblings drew apart.

“Shall I go back inside with you?” Ulrich asked.

Agathe said no and looked around for an escape.

It suddenly occurred to Ulrich that the only way they could avoid the other guests was by retreating to the kitchen.

There they found the cook and the servants Rachel and Soliman filling batteries of glasses and loading trays with cakes. Rachel dropped a curtsy as they came in, and Ulrich said: “It’s too hot in there, can we get some refreshment here?” He sat down on a window ledge with Agathe and put a glass and a plate down for show so that if anyone should see them it would look as if two friends of the house were permitting themselves an amusing breach of decorum. When they were seated, he said with a little sigh: “So it’s merely a matter of feeling whether one finds such a Professor Lindner good or insufferable!”

Agathe was occupying her fingers with a wrapped sweet.

“Which is to say,” Ulrich continued, “that feeling is neither true nor false. Feeling has remained a private matter! It has been left at the mercy of suggestion, fantasy, persuasion! You and I are no different from those people in there. Do you know what those people want?”

“No, but does it matter?”

“It may very well matter. Because they are forming two parties, each of which is as right or as wrong as the other.”

Agathe said it seemed to her somewhat better to believe in human goodness than only in guns and politics, even if the manner of the belief was risible.

“What is he like, this man you met?” Ulrich asked.