the trap into which he had fallen. Kohn did not put up a fight: he let
Christophe knock him down and rub his face in the dust, while he howled;
but he would begin again at once with a malice that never tired--until the
day when he became really afraid, Christophe having seriously threatened to
kill him.

Christophe went out early. He stopped to breakfast at a cafe. In spite
of his self-consciousness, he forced himself to lose no opportunity of
speaking French. Since he had to live in Paris, perhaps for years, he had
better adapt himself as quickly as possible to the conditions of life
there, and overcome his repugnance. So he forced himself, although he
suffered horribly, to take no notice of the sly looks of the waiter as
he listened to his horrible lingo. He was not discouraged, and went on
obstinately constructing ponderous, formless sentences and repeating them
until he was understood.

He set out to look for Diener. As usual, when he had an idea in his head,
he saw nothing of what was going on about him. During that first walk his
only impression of Paris was that of an old and ill-kept town. Christophe
was accustomed to the towns of the new German Empire, that were both very
old and very young, towns in which there is expressed a new birth of pride:
and he was unpleasantly surprised by the shabby streets, the muddy roads,
the hustling people, the confused traffic--vehicles of every sort and
shape: venerable horse omnibuses, steam trams, electric trams, all sorts
of trams--booths on the pavements, merry-go-rounds of wooden horses (or
monsters and gargoyles) in the squares that were choked up with statues of
gentlemen in frock-coats: all sorts of relics of a town of the Middle Ages
endowed with the privilege of universal suffrage, but quite incapable of
breaking free from its old vagabond existence. The fog of the preceding day
had turned to a light, soaking rain. In many of the shops the gas was lit,