he purifies, he has a purging quality. Today they were saying
at breakfast that if a crime is big enough, if it is on a grand scale,
it leaves off being a crime, for then it is a success, and success is
always virtue,--that is, I gather, if it is a German success; if it is
a French one it is an outrage. You mustn't rob a widow, for instance,
they said, because that is stupid; the result is small and you may be
found out and be cut by your friends. But you may rob a great many
widows and it will be a successful business deal. No one will say
anything, because you have been clever and successful.

I know this view is not altogether unknown in other countries, but they
don't hold it deliberately as a whole nation. Among other things that
Hilda Seeberg's father did which roused her unforgiveness was just
this,--to rob too few widows, come to grief over it, and go bankrupt
for very little. She told me about it in an outburst of dark
confidence. Just talking of it made her eyes black with anger. It was
so terrible, she said, to smash for a small amount,--such an
overwhelming shame for the Seeberg family, whose poverty thus became
apparent and unhideable. If one smashes, she said, one does it for
millions, otherwise one doesn't smash. There is something so chic
about millions, she said, that whether you make them or whether you
lose them you are equally well thought-of and renowned.

"But it is better to--well, disappoint few widows than many," I
suggested, picking my words.

"For less than a million marks," she said, eyeing me sternly, "it is a
disgrace to fail."

They're funny, aren't they. I'm greatly interested. They remind me
more and more of what Kloster says they are, clever children. They
have the unmoral quality of children. I listen--they treat me as if I
were the audience, and they address themselves in a bunch to my
corner--and I put in one of my words now and then, generally with an
unfortunate effect, for they talk even louder after that, and then
presently the men get up and put their heels together and make a stiff
inclusive bow and disappear, and Frau Berg folds up her napkin and
brushes the crumbs out of her creases and says, "_Ja, ja_," with a
sigh, as a sort of final benediction on the departed conversation, and
then rises slowly and locks up the sugar, and then treads heavily away
down the passage and has a brief skirmish in the kitchen with Wanda,
who daily tries to pretend there hadn't