Gurdweill sat down on a bench in the empty Volksgarten. At the sight of a couple of solitary nursemaids pushing carriages, he felt a deep pain. He had not been in the Volksgarten since the summer, when Thea was in the hospital after giving birth to Martin. How different everything had been then. ‘Even now’ — an inner voice called out to him — ‘even now all is not lost! Something can still be saved …’ But Gurdweill did not listen. Through the bare branches he stared at the autumn sky, and it came to him that he, Gurdweill, now lived not at this or that address, but in the city of Vienna as a whole: in the literal sense of the words, he lived in Vienna. For some reason this struck him as amusing, and he smiled.

He began to feel cold, and he stood up and started walking down the garden paths, crunching the gravel underfoot. Then he decided not to wait any longer, but to go straight to the tram. By the time he got to the Meidling district … And even when he got there, he would still have to ask the way! Besides, he had been told that the institution opened its doors at five. To tell the truth, the almshouse interested him in itself, and not only because he stood in need of it at the present moment. Otherwise he could surely have found the money for a hotel somewhere. He had been wanting to acquaint himself with such a place for a long time, and now his chance had come.

After a three-quarter-hour journey on the tram, he got off at the last stop, when daylight was already fading. He found himself not far from a railway bridge, in a cold, open square, in a place where he had never been before. Many-storeyed new buildings were dotted here and there, apparently workers’ tenements. There was hardly a soul to be seen. The few passengers, all from the lower classes, who had dismounted from the tram with him had hurried off in different directions.

Gurdweill took a few steps forward, along the railway embankment, and then stood waiting for some passer-by to show him the way. An old woman, when asked, hesitated for a minute and then said that she had no idea where the almshouse founded by the Emperor Franz-Josef might be. He walked on a little and saw a man dressed in rags, and carrying a bundle in his hand, coming towards him. ‘He’ll surely know!’ said Gurdweill to himself. And indeed he did.

‘Pass under this bridge, young man,’ he said. ‘You’ll find a stairway on your right. Go up it and you’ll see it right in front of you. It’s the only building there.’