to thank and the sacrifices I am making. Your intended haggled over your dowry in a way that was positively shameful. Anyway, you are nothing but a makeweight!"
At this juncture he received a resounding smack in the face and before he could recover his breath Magda was in her room and had locked the door. In rueful silence Diederich rubbed his cheek. Then his indignation boiled up again, but a kind of satisfaction ensued. The crisis was over.
During the night he had quite made up his mind to appear in court rather late, and to show by his whole demeanour how little the whole thing affected him. But he could not contain himself. When he entered the particular court which had been specified an entirely different case was still being heard. Jadassohn, who presented an uncommonly sinister appearance in his black gown, was just engaged in demanding two years in the reformatory for a poor young lad who was scarcely more than a child. The judge granted only one, it is true, but the youthful criminal broke out into such screams that Diederich, himself in a state of great anxiety, felt ill out of sheer compassion. He went outside and entered a lavatory, although a notice on the door read: "For members of the Bar only." Immediately after him Jadassohn appeared. When he saw Diederich he wanted to retire, but the latter at once asked what sort of a place a reformatory was, and what a pimp like that would do there. "As if we could be bothered with those details!" was Jadassohn's only reply, as he disappeared. Diederich's qualms increased still more, as if a ghastly abyss yawned between Jadassohn, representing the authorities, and himself, and he had ventured too near the edge. It had happened with the most pious intentions in an excess of zeal for authority. However, now he would have to take himself in hand, lest he be seized and ground to powder. He would have to kneel and cringe in the hope of escaping. Lucky the man who lived in the obscurity of private life! Diederich vowed
