So this time too his protestations and grimaces bubbled forth at once, but they elicited no reaction from the master. Professor Lindner had hastily made the sign of the cross over the soup and was eating gravely, silently, and in a hurry. Once in a while, briefly and without focus, his glance would come to rest on the part in his son’s hair. That part had on this day been drawn through the dense, reddish-brown hair with comb, water, and a good deal of pomade like a narrow-gauge railroad track through a reluctantly swerving forest thicket. When Peter felt his father’s gaze resting there, he lowered his head to cover with his chin the red, screamingly beautiful tie with which his educator was not yet acquainted. For at any moment the gaze might gently widen at such a discovery and the mouth follow it with words about “submission to the slogans of coxcombs and buffoons” or “social preening and servile vanity” that offended Peter. But this time nothing happened, and it was only a while later, when the plates were being changed, that Lindner said kindly and vaguely—it was not even certain whether he was referring to the tie or whether his admonition was prompted by an unconsciously registered impression: “People who still need to struggle a lot with their vanity should avoid anything conspicuous in their outward appearance. . . !”

Peter took advantage of his father’s unexpected lapse of character to produce a story about an “Unsatisfactory” he claimed to have earned by an act of chivalry, because, tested after another student, he had deliberately made himself look unprepared in order not to outshine his classmate by meeting incredible demands that were simply beyond the reach of weaker students.

Professor Lindner merely shook his head at this.

But when the middle course had been taken away and dessert was brought to the table, he began, pensively and circumspectly: “Look, it’s precisely in the years of the greatest appetite that one can win the most momentous victories over oneself, not by starving oneself, which is unhealthy, but by occasionally renouncing a favorite dish after one has eaten enough.”

Peter was silent and showed no understanding of this, but his head once again was blushing bright red up to his ears.

“It would be a mistake,” his father continued, “if I were to punish you for this poor grade, because the childish lies you have added to it are evidence of such a lack of the very notion of moral honor that one must first make the soil tillable on which punishment can take effect. So I’m not asking anything of you except that you recognize this yourself, and I’m sure that then you will punish yourself.”

That was the moment when Peter vigorously alluded to his weak health and also to the overwork that could have caused his recent failures in school and that made it impossible for him to steel his character by renouncing dessert.

“The French philosopher Comte,” Professor Lindner replied calmly, “was accustomed after dining, often without any particular inducement, to chew on a crust of dry bread in place of dessert, just to remember those who do not even have dry bread. It is a fine trait that reminds us that every exercise of abstinence and simplicity has profound social significance!”