Familiar as he had become with the process of disillusionment, Paul was not quite prepared for the stony reality of Munich, for the icy rain that soaked his hat and filled the gutters with despairing tears, nor for the blundering tram-way guard who forgot to set him down at Ohmstrasse and carried him to the outer rim of Schwabing. Neither was he prepared for the ironic Führ di' Gott with which an octogenarian Portier waved him into the world again after informing him that Frau Stiglmayr had been dead fifteen years—a certain Frau Stiglmayr whose name and address had somehow persisted in his head since childhood. Damp to the very soul he sought out a cheap hotel near the Hauptbahnhof, made his way to the Hoftheater to hear Fra Diavolo—of all operas the least meet and fitting—then tossed for hours in a narrow bed, under an absurd feather Decke, sleepless and disconsolate.
Romance, he had learned, was not a property of strange lands and situations, but a magical lens through which one viewed utterly unmagical objects—a spurious beautifier. Nevertheless it was disheartening to give the lie to certain beguiling fictions. However absurd it may have been for a small boy, on the strength of a doddering musician's inscription, to envisage Munich as enchanted ground, however absurd it may have been for him to
