nervous. Nor I don't like all these frightfully
lively human beings down there with their black animal eyes. None of
the Romance peoples have any conscience in their eyes.... No, now I am
going up to Denmark for a while."

"To Denmark?"

"Yes. And I promise myself benefit from it. Chance kept me from ever
going there, close as I was to the boundary all through my youth, and
yet I have always known and loved the place. I suppose I must have this
affection for the north from my father, for my mother was really fonder
of the _bellezza_, that is, provided she didn't find everything utterly
immaterial. But take the books that are written up there, those deep,
pure, humorous books, Lisaveta--to me there is nothing like them and I
love them. Take the Scandinavian meals, those incomparable meals that
you can only stand in a strong salt air (I don't know whether I can
stand them at all any more), and that I'm a little familiar with
from my own home, for that's just the way we eat at home. Or just
simply take the names, the personal names that adorn the people up
there, and that we also had in large numbers at home, take a name
like Ingeborg,--a harp-chord of the most immaculate poesy. And then the
sea--they have the Baltic up there! ... In short, I am going up there,
Lisaveta. I wish to see the Baltic again, hear these names again, read
those books on the spot; and I wish to stand on the terrace of
Kronborg, where the ghost appeared to Hamlet and brought distress and
death upon the poor, noble young man ..."

"How are you going to go, Tonio, if I may ask? By what route!"

"The usual one," he said with a shrug of the shoulders and a visible
blush. "Yes, I shall touch upon my--my point of departure, Lisaveta,
after the lapse of thirteen years, and that may be rather comic."

Lisaveta smiled.

"That is what I wanted to hear, Tonio Kroeger. And so, go with God. And
don't fail to write to me, too, do you hear? I promise myself an
eventful letter from your trip to--Denmark."

VI

And Tonio Kroeger journeyed northward. He traveled comfortably (for he
was wont to say that any one who has so much more distress of soul than
other people may justly claim a little external comfort), and he did
not rest until the towers of the cramped city which had been his
starting-point rose before him in the gray air. There he made a brief,
strange sojourn ...

A dreary afternoon was already turning into even