death. We are hopelessly pulled apart. Our life will remain
meaningless theatrics". As she ate, the girl looked on, with a
cheerful look emanating from the uncomprehending reddish brown eyes
on her clear face. Schulz had sunken into gloomy thoughts. The girl
said that her whole life also was a spectacle, and therefore she
didn't find it to be so meaningless. In the acting school, in which
she was preparing for a career on the stage as a sentimental lover,
hard work was done. Mr. Kohn ought to drop in sometime, to convince
himself about it. Kuno Kohn looked at the girl ardently for a while.
He thought: "Such a small, stupid girl." But he soon left.

Outside, the lyric poet Roland Rufus suddenly seized his arm firmly
and excitedly, saying: "Have you read the review written by a certain
Bruno Bibelbauer in the monthly medical journal, in which it is
claimed that the reason for my paranoia is that I imagine that I have
some paralysis. Everyone looks at me strangely; I am famous. My
publisher is giving me a large advance. But--ah, I must not say
it--I am incurable." He went immediately into a better
wine-restaurant.

A horse hobbled by, pulling a carriage, like an old man. The
hunchback Kohn idly leaned against a Catholic church, thinking about
existence. He said to himself: "Yet how odd existence really is.
And yet one props oneself up, somewhere, somehow, without connection,
irrelevant; one could just as well continue for better or for worse,
anywhere. That makes me unhappy." Before him a small, silent
whore's dog had stopped, had listened humbly, with glowing eyes.

A fiery glass wedding coach hopped by. Inside, in a corner, he saw
the pale, expressionless face of a bridegroom. An empty carriage