This Month's Installment
What's italicized is what I'm unsure about.
Hans wanted to reply when he saw his maid come towards him from the other side of the street: "I should go straight to the town hall; the gracious Fräulein is sending me. The Bärwald dignitaries, Mr. Hauptmann and the privy councillor, have just arrived. The Pastor should go to them immediately."In the "Rodenburg Court," in which it had been very quiet in recent times, all of a sudden, life had now returned; the large hall was full of pieces of luggage, one piled on top of an-other. The steps and hallways were filled with restless people rushing here and there, who were looking for their rooms and directing a thousand questions to the staff, which had become scarce because of the conscription. This appeared set alight by the general nervousness;---181---there were no answers at all or insufficient ones, about which the foreigners then fell again into bright annoyance. Yes, even the otherwise so sure and dignified doorman in his gold-trimmed uniform had disposed of his magnificent composure so much that to Hans' question about a Captain Warsow-Bärwälde he strongly and firmly claimed that such a gentleman would not be staying in their hotel, that, actually, there was not such a gentleman at all.But through the large glass panes of the door that led into the dining hall, Hans already caught sight of the two old men.The Bärwalder sat quite bent, his head propped up on his wrinkled hand with the great blue veins, an answer-less question in his grey eyes. More youthful appeared the privy councillor with the white goatee, the bold nose under the high, still quite smooth forehead, above which, artfully parted, his full, white-blond hair gleamed, whose care even to-day was not neglected in the least. They were not talking politics to-day, as at other times; they were not fighting with one an-other; the privy councillor probably made a slight beginning of it because he had the newspaper in front of him and appeared to be reading the latest war news, but the Bärwalder did not show an interest in it; he had certainly not at all heard what his brother read; his eye remained directed into empty space.
