Since the cortege was to be conducted through the town in a solemn procession on foot before the carriages were boarded, Ulrich was charged with leading the way, flanked on one side by the imperial and royal vice-regent, who had appeared in person to honor the final sleep of a member of the House of Lords, and on the other by an equally high-ranking gentleman, the elder in a delegation of three representing the House of Lords; behind them came the two other noblemen, then the rector and the senate of the university, and only after these, but ahead of the seemingly endless river of top hats worn by persons of varying and, in their sequence from front to rear, gradually decreasing dignity, came Agathe, surrounded by women in black and designating the point where private sorrow meted out by fate had its place among the pinnacles of public service. The unregulated attendance of people with “nothing but sympathy” only began behind those appearing in an official capacity, and it was even possible that it consisted of no one but the old servant couple trudging along by themselves behind the procession. So it was on the whole a procession of men, and the person walking at Agathe’s side was not Ulrich but her husband, Professor Hagauer, whose apple-cheeked face with the bristly caterpillar of a moustache above his mouth had become alien to her in the meantime, an impression augmented by the dense, black veil that permitted her to observe him in secret, and which made him look blue. Ulrich himself, who had been in his sister’s company throughout the many preceding hours, suddenly had the feeling that the ancient protocol of funeral procedure, which dated from the time of the university’s founding, had torn her away from him, for he missed her and was not permitted to turn around to see her; he tried to think of a joke to greet her with when they met again, but his thoughts were deprived of their freedom by the vice-regent, who was striding beside him with lordly bearing and for the most part in silence but who occasionally addressed him with a murmured statement he was obliged to catch—a quality of solicitude that had already been shown him by all of their Excellencies, all the way up to their Magnificences and Worships—for he was reputed to be Count Leinsdorf’s shadow, and the mistrust with which the count’s patriotic campaign was gradually coming to be regarded conferred distinction upon him.^*