It was early in the afternoon. The closed shops and warehouses and few people in the streets made the city seem unlike its usual self — as though it had been swept clean and carefully spruced up in preparation for some special occasion. Gurdweill strolled slowly and aimlessly from street to street and alley to alley, his bare head bowed, the hand holding his cane swaying like a pendulum in time with his step. Here and there the doorways revealed a watchman in his shirtsleeves, reading a newspaper and relaxing at his post. These simple people seemed to Gurdweill amazingly contented, calm, and carefree, enjoying their day of rest to the full and imparting their own inner serenity to the buildings and streets. In a few of the quiet streets, their dark-grey asphalt glittering in the sun, boys were playing football or taking turns to ride a bicycle — boys with flushed faces whose bare, sunburned knees were dirty and scarred. Occasionally a motorcar drove past, scattering them to the pavements with short blasts of its horn. The quiet streets and his own steady pace gradually permeated Gurdweill with a melancholy calm. He had always felt a delicate love for this city with its air of faint sadness, both mocking and innocent at once. He loved its winding, capricious streets, its magnificent buildings, as proud as they were modest, its parks and gardens steeped in a sweet sadness, and its chain of encircling hills, already tinged with the dark, cloudy bleakness of the distant alpine crags. He loved its frivolous, high-spirited inhabitants, and the air of frothy, light-hearted gaiety that permeated it. He had lived here for twelve years, ever since he came of age. And the autumn in Vienna! The autumn days were wonderful, a little grey and cloudy in the morning and with a mild, gentle warmth in the golden, transparent afternoons. The sky was a deep, still azure; and, a few feet above the ground, delicate white threads floated aimlessly in the air — a sure sign, people said, of more warm days to come.

Gurdweill had no wish to see any of his friends now, and he instinctively avoided the streets in which he might have encountered them. He found himself walking behind the Börse, crossing the Schottenring, and continuing along Porzellangasse. There he stopped by force of habit outside the cinema and looked at the posters on either side of the entrance. But the program did not interest him, and he turned away, intending to go into the nearby Liechtensteinpark, when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Ah, Herr Doktor! What an honour, Herr Doktor!’

Gurdweill recoiled in fright, and turned around.

It was Franzl Heidelberger with his wife, Gustl, who smiled at Gurdweill as if he were an old friend.

‘And how are you, Herr Gurdweill?’ Heidelberger beamed with pleasure. ‘Why don’t you come and visit us?’

‘Well, er, I was going to …’ Gurdweill stammered. ‘And how are you?’

‘Very well, Herr Doktor!’