Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/40

and, as I was getting on well, they gave me permission to smoke just one small pipe. Before proceeding I really ought also to say that I was born in Altstadt, and that my mother, who lived there, frequently sent me some good things; there was no freight to pay, and she always put a packet of this excellent tobacco in the hamper. To return to my story, I get the pipe lit, and hardly has the tobacco begun to burn, before the man next to me (he was a Dane who had been taken prisoner at Düppel, where he had come too close to a bayonet), lifts his head a wee bit from the pillow, and starts sniffing; and I quite understood that the smell was not disagreeable to him, for he hugged himself with delight. I am puffing with all my might. He goes on sniffing and inhaling. 'My word,' he says. 'Why,' I reply, 'does it perhaps smell of sulphur?' 'Nothing of the kind,' he says in fairly good German; 'but I'll be hanged if it isn't Altstäder-Ziegel tobacco you are smoking.' 'Then you won't be hanged this time,' I tell him. 'By the way, how do you know Altstäder-Ziegel tobacco?' 'Well, I should think I ought to know it,' he answers, 'for I was two years in Altstadt when I travelled for my trade—I am a watchmaker. Since then I have not tasted that tobacco, and now, when smelling it once more, I feel again as if I were with my kind Master Storch at the corner of Goose Square and Smith Street.' 'Well, I never!' I say, nearly dropping the pipe. 'You can take my word for what I've told you,' he answers. 'Why, then, you were working under my own father!'—What do you think of that? And as we came to talk about it, I was able to recall him, though he had grown a big beard, a real Hannemann-beard.… Finally I gave him a pipe of tobacco, but it might have chanced that I had given him a hot bullet instead."