him, but yet I made no effort to overtake him. Up in Graendsen I met Hans
Pauli, who nodded and hurried past me. Why was he in such a hurry? I had
not the slightest intention of asking him for a shilling, and, more than
that, I intended at the very first opportunity to return him a blanket
which I had borrowed from him some weeks before.

Just wait until I could get my foot on the ladder, I would be beholden to
no man, not even for a blanket. Perhaps even this very day I might
commence an article on the "Crimes of Futurity," "Freedom of Will," or
what not, at any rate, something worth reading, something for which I
would at least get ten shillings.... And at the thought of this article I
felt myself fired with a desire to set to work immediately and to draw
from the contents of my overflowing brain. I would find a suitable place
to write in the park and not rest until I had completed my article.

But the old cripple was still making the same sprawling movements ahead of
me up the street. The sight of this infirm creature constantly in front of
me, commenced to irritate me--his journey seemed endless; perhaps he had
made up his mind to go to exactly the same place as I had, and I must
needs have him before my eyes the whole way. In my irritation it seemed to
me that he slackened his pace a little at every cross street, as if
waiting to see which direction I intended to take, upon which he would
again swing his bundle in the air and peg away with all his might to keep
ahead of me. I follow and watch this tiresome creature and get more and
more exasperated with him, I am conscious that he has, little by little,
destroyed my happy mood and dragged the pure, beautiful morning down to
the level of his own ugliness. He looks like a great sprawling reptile
striving with might and main to win a place in the world and reserve the
footpath for himself. When we reached the top of the hill I determined to
put up with it no longer. I turned to a shop window and stopped in order