‘A year ago I spent a few days in Berlin, where this Bloch stays. When I arrived I wrote him a note and arranged to meet him in the morning in a café. I must tell you in advance that the man is far from poor. His father owns a bank in Berlin and gives him a generous allowance. To cut a long story short: I met Bloch as arranged and we spent an hour in the café. Then he invited me to have lunch with him — not at home, since he was on bad terms with his wife, but in a restaurant. Outside the restaurant he suddenly stopped, took out his wallet, and began counting and recounting his money. He had about two hundred and fifty marks, I remember. “Why are you counting your money?” I asked in surprise. “Just to be on the safe side,” he replied. “I always count my money before entering any place where you have to pay.” And he told me the following story: when he was fifteen years old, still at high school, a funny thing happened to him. (They were then living in Dresden, where he was born and stayed until he was eighteen, when his parents moved to Berlin.) There was a girl there, of his own age, a pupil at a girls’ school, whom he used to see almost every day on his way to school, and who occupied his thoughts continuously for months on end although he had never met her face to face. He was much too shy to approach her, even though he longed to do so. And then, one Sunday afternoon at the beginning of summer, he met a friend in the street and stopped to talk to him. After a few minutes the girl came up to them and his friend introduced him to her. It transpired that she was his cousin, and that the two of them had arranged to go on an excursion into the countryside together. But his friend immediately informed her that he had to stay at home and would not be able to keep his promise. Upon which the girl proposed that he, Bloch, accompany her instead — an invitation that, as you may imagine, he was only too happy to accept. When they were already sitting in the tram, and the conductor came to take the money for their tickets, Bloch recalled that he had only one mark with him — barely enough to pay for the tram fare for the two of them there and back. What was he going to do now? The girl would certainly want to have something to drink in the hot summer weather, and perhaps to eat too! He was too embarrassed to tell her that he didn’t have any money with him. In the meantime the girl saw a friend of hers at the station and called out to her from the window, inviting her to join them. She immediately agreed. Bloch paid for her tram fare too, out of good manners … And he was left with twenty-five pfennig, just enough to pay for his own fare back.’