BOOK ONE: YESTERDAY 39 whole story and looked at his friend Gustav in a calm and ex- ceedingly friendly manner. "What do you mean by certain as the existence of the soul and the resurrection?" asked Mühlheim. "Do you me an hun- dred per cent certain or hundred percent uncertain?" "I mean certain, absolutely certain," answered Gutwetter with imper- turbable ami ability. But they had some difficulty in understanding each other. For Gustav had jumped up with a shout, seized the stout and placid Gutwetter by the shoulders, shook him and slapped him on the back with noisy expressions of joy. Later, when Herr Gutwetter was alone with Sybil, he said in his quiet, pleasant tones: "How easy it is to make people happy. A biography. What is a biography? As if anything else mattered but creative work. And yet here a man goes rum- maging round among odds and ends, so-called reality, among faded, worn-out things, and is quite happy. What a child our friend Gustav is." Sybillooked pensively into his big, shining, childish eyes. Friedrich Wilhelm Gutwetter was ranked as one of the foremost of German stylists. Many thought him the finest. Sybil, who was conscientiously painstaking over her little tales, asked him to help her with a certain sentence which she could not get right. Gutwetter gave her his advice. He gazed at his docile pupil with joy and admiration. Gustav rneanwhile was in the highest of spirits. He found the world a magnificent place and wanted to do everyone a good turn. He even gave his servant Schlüter aminute ac- count of the glad tidings that Friedrich Wilhelm Gutwetter had brought with him. He was happy.

THE OPPERMANNS 7 'VThen the first of bis guests had arrived and were standing W talking to one another in a rather formal way, Gustav had been afraid it would be aboring evening. It had been rash to bring people of so many different types together. But it was just that which charrned him most in his manner of living, the fact that he made an organic whole of separate units. He desired-in fact he .had set his heart on it-ta g.ather about him this evening all those who meant something to hirn: his family, bis business associates, his friends from the Bibliophile Sociery, from the Theatre Club, from the sporting world, his women. Now, after dinner, he was glad to see that the ex- cellenr dainty courses of the carefully planned menu had raised the spirits of everyone and that all the previous formal- ity had vanished. There they stood or sat together, his "guests, about twenty of them, in groups, and yet in such a way that DO group was quite separate from another, and chatted amiably. They talked of politics, That was, unfortunately, inevitable nowa- days, Jaques Lavendel, as usual, was the most at his ease, Stout and sluggish, he sprawled in the most comfortable arm- chair, bis shrewd, kindly eyes half shut, and listened with ironical indulgence while Karl Theodor Hintze condemned the Nationalist movement lock, stock, and barrel, According to chief clerk Hintze, its adherents were without exception dunces or swindlers. Herr Jaques Lavendel's broad face smiled with provoking forbearance. "You are unjust to peo- ple, my dear Herr Hintze," said he, in his hoarse, amiable voice, shaking his head. "It is the very strength of this party that it disregards reason and appeals to instinct. It needs intel- ligence and will-power to proceed as consistently as those fel-