thing and everybody. That must be nice ... But
what ails me, and how will all this end?"

This fashion of scrutinizing himself and his relation to life played an
important part in Tonio's love for Hans Hansen. First of all he loved
him because he was handsome; but also because he seemed to be his own
antipodes and converse in all respects. Hans Hansen was an excellent
scholar and at the same time a lively fellow who rode, swam, and played
athletic games like a hero and rejoiced in universal popularity. The
teachers were devoted to him almost to the point of affection, called
him by his Christian name, and advanced him in every way; his comrades
were eager for his favor, and on the street ladies and gentlemen would
stop him, seize him by the tuft of flaxen hair that peeped out from
under his Danish sailor's cap, saying, "Good day, Hans Hansen with
your pretty tuft! Are you still _Primus_? Remember me to father and
mother, my fine boy ..."

That was Hans Hansen, and ever since Tonio Kroeger first knew him he
felt a longing as often as he beheld him, an envious longing that dwelt
above his breast and burned there. "Oh, if one had such blue eyes," he
thought, "and lived such an orderly life and in such happy communion
with the whole world as you do! You are always occupied in some
decorous and universally respected way. When you have done your tasks
for school, you take riding lessons or work with the fret-saw, and even
in the long vacation on the seashore your time is taken up with rowing,
sailing, and swimming; while I lie lost in idle thought on the sand,
staring at the mysteriously changing expressions that flit over the
countenance of the sea. And that is why your eyes are so clear. To be
like you." ...

He did not make the attempt to be like Hans Hansen, and perhaps he did
not even mean this wish very seriously. But he did have an aching
desire to be loved by Hans, just as he was, and he sued for that love
in his fashion, a slow and intimate, devoted, passive and sorrowful
fashion, but a sorrow which can burn more deeply and consumingly than
all the swift passionateness one might have expected in view of his
foreign appearance.

And he did not sue wholly in vain; for Hans, who by the way respected a
certain superiority in Tonio, a skill in speech which enabled him to
give utterance to difficult matters, understood quite well that an
unusually strong and tender affection was vibrating here, showed
himself grateful