And while he was occupied with such questions, Ulrich had slowly walked into the town, which opened up before him, at once strange and familiar. He had arranged for a car to follow behind him with his luggage, to which he had added quite a number of books at the last minute, and with the old servant, who, already belonging to his childhood memories, had come to combine the functions of caretaker, butler, and beadle in a manner that over the years had brought imprecision to their inner boundaries. Probably it was this humble, taciturn man to whom Ulrich’s father had dictated the telegram announcing his death, and Ulrich’s feet led him homeward in a kind of pleasant wonderment, as his now alert senses took in with curiosity the fresh impressions with which every growing city surprises a visitor who has not seen it in a long time. At a certain point, which they remembered before he did, Ulrich’s feet departed with him from the main street, and after a short time he found himself in a narrow lane formed by two garden walls. Diagonally across from him stood the house, barely three stories high, the central part of it taller than the wings, the old stable off to the side, and, still pressed against the garden wall, the little house where the butler lived with his wife; it looked as if, for all his dependence on them, the aged master had pushed them as far away from himself as he could while at the same time enclosing them within his walls. Absorbed in his thoughts, Ulrich had arrived at the closed entrance to the garden, raised the big ring-shaped knocker that hung there in place of a bell, and let it drop against the low, age-blackened door, before his attendant came running and corrected his error. They had to walk back around the wall to the front entrance, where the car had stopped, and only then, at the moment when he saw the shuttered facade of the house before him, did Ulrich take note of the fact that his sister had not come to meet him at the station. The butler informed him that Madam had complained of a migraine and retired after lunch, giving instructions to wake her when he, the Herr Doktor, arrived. Did his sister have migraines often, Ulrich went on to ask, and immediately regretted his awkwardness, which revealed his estrangement to the aged confidant of his father’s household and touched on family relations it was better to pass over in silence. “Madam gave orders for tea to be served in half an hour,” the old man replied with the politely blank face of a well-trained servant, giving discreet assurance that he understood nothing that went beyond his duty.