This time the guests were Jeanette Scheurl, Herr and Frau Knöterich, Schildknapp, Rudi Schwerdtfeger, Zink and Spengler, Kranich the numismatist, Radbruch the publisher and his wife, Zwitscher the actress, the woman from Bukovina who wrote comedies and whose name was Binder-Majoresku, plus myself and my dear wife – and Adrian had come as well, after much persuasion exerted not only by me, but also by Schildknapp and Schwerdtfeger. I will not pursue whose request had tipped the scale, and certainly do not flatter myself that it was mine. Since at dinner he sat next to Jeanette, whose presence always did him good, and since he was surrounded by other familiar faces, he seemed not to regret having given in, but to be quite at ease during the three hours he spent there – and all the while I once again observed to my silent amusement the instinctive courtesy (which for only a few had any basis in real knowledge of his work) and more or less shy deference with which society treated a man only just turned thirty-eight. The phenomenon, as I said, amused me – and then again, it weighed more anxiously on my heart, since the reason behind people’s behavior was in fact the atmosphere of indescribable aloofness and solitude that increasingly surrounded him, a distancing that during these years was becoming ever more noticeable and could indeed make one feel as if Adrian came from some land where no one else dwells.