The man toward whom such passionate feelings and fantasies were en route was meanwhile sitting in the company of his son, Peter, at his midday meal, which he still ate, following a good rule of former times, at the actual hour of noon. There was no luxury in his surroundings, or, as it is better to say in German, no Überfluss; for the native word reveals the sense that the adopted foreign word—Luxus—obscures. Both words have the meaning of the superfluous and dispensable that idle wealth might accumulate; but Überfluss additionally means an overflowing, and thus signifies a padding of existence that slightly swells beyond its frame, or that surplus ease and liberality of European life of which only the very poor are deprived. Lindner distinguished between these two concepts of luxury, and just as luxury in the first sense was absent from his home, it was present in the second. One already received this peculiar impression, though one could not tell where it came from, when the front door opened and revealed the moderately large foyer. If one looked around, none of the furnishings created to serve mankind with a useful invention were lacking: an umbrella rack, soldered from sheet metal and painted with enamel, took care of one’s umbrella. A coarsely woven runner rug removed from shoes the dirt that had not already been left on the doormat. Two clothes brushes were tucked into a pouch on the wall, and a rack for hanging outer garments was also provided. An electric bulb lit the room; there was even a mirror; and all these implements were maintained with the utmost care and promptly replaced when they suffered damage. But the bulb had the lowest wattage, by which one can just barely make things out; the clothes rack had only three hooks; the mirror encompassed only four-fifths of an adult face; and the carpet was just thick enough and its quality just good enough to enable one to feel the floor through it and not sink into softness. It may very well be futile, by the way, to attempt to describe the spirit of a place through such details, but one needed only to enter that house to feel wafting toward one the peculiar presence of something alive and intangible that was not strict and not lax, not affluent and not poor, not flavored and not tasteless, but simply a positive result of two negations such as might best be described as “lack of waste.” However, this by no means precluded a feeling for beauty, indeed even a sense of pleasure, from making themselves felt as one entered the inner rooms. Sumptuous prints hung framed on the walls, the window next to Lindner’s desk was adorned with a colorful showpiece of glass representing a knight who, with a prim gesture, was liberating a maiden from a dragon, and in the choice of several painted vases that held beautiful paper flowers, in the acquisition of an ashtray by the nonsmoker, as well as in the many small details through which, as it were, a ray of sunlight falls into the grave circle of duty represented by the upkeep and care of a household, Lindner had gladly permitted an unbuttoned taste to prevail. And yet, the twelve-edged severity of the room’s shape permeated everything just enough to remind one of the hardness of life, which should not be forgotten even in comfort; and even where a touch of feminine indiscipline stemming from earlier times—a cross-stitched doily, a pillow with roses, or the petticoat of a lampshade—interrupted this unity, the containing whole was strong enough to prevent the voluptuous element from overstepping its bounds.