m greatly both
with his fellows and his teachers. The son of Consul Kroeger thought it
on the one hand stupid and base to condemn him for writing verses, and
he despised on that account both fellows and teachers, whose bad
manners were always repellent to him, and whose personal weaknesses he
detected with strange penetration. On the other hand, he himself found
it really an improper dissipation to write verse, and so had to agree
to some extent with all those who regarded it as a doubtful occupation.
But this could not make him give it up.

As he wasted his time at home, was slow and generally inattentive in
class hours, and had a bad record with his teachers, he always brought
home the most wretched reports; at which his father, a tall, carefully
dressed gentleman with meditative blue eyes, who always wore a
wild flower in his button-hole, shewed himself both incensed and
distressed. But to his mother, his beautiful mother with the black
hair, whose name was Consuelo and who was altogether so different from
the other ladies of the town, because Tonio's father had once fetched
her from clear down at the bottom of the map--to his mother his reports
were absolutely immaterial.

Tonio loved his dark, passionate mother, who played the piano and the
mandolin so wonderfully, and he was happy that she did not grieve over
his doubtful position among men. On the other hand, however, he
realized that his father's anger was much more estimable and
respectable, and although he was censured by his father, he was at
bottom quite in agreement with him, whereas he found the cheerful
indifference of his mother a trifle unprincipled. At times his thoughts
would run about thus: "It is bad enough that I am as I am, and will not
and cannot alter myself, negligent, refractory, and intent on things
that nobody else thinks of. At least it is proper that they should
seriously chide and punish me for it, and not pass it over with kisses
and music. After all, we aren't gipsies in a green wagon, but decent
folks, Consul Kroegers, the Kroeger family" ... And not infrequently he
would think: "Well, why am I so peculiar and at outs with everything,
at loggerheads with my teachers and a stranger among the boys? Look at
them, the good pupils and those of honest mediocrity. They don't think
the teachers funny, they write no verses, and they only think what
others think and what you can say out loud. How proper they must feel,
how satisfied with every