B555 <=> B557 (BTG XXXI Last sojourn to Earth, p. 556)

“But the ‘honorable doctor,’ however, never came. Almost twenty minutes passed. I could not bear it any longer and rang the bell.

“When the servant entered I asked her to remind the ‘doctor’ about me and to say that I was in a very great hurry and could not wait any longer for him.

“She went away.

“Another five minutes passed.

“At last the ‘doctor’ himself appeared.

“Hurriedly, I shortly explained to him what I wanted from him; but to my astonishment he began to laugh irrepressibly at my request.

“I thought: Obviously during dinner with his friends this ‘doctor’ has drunk more than one glass too much of ‘German beer.’

“And only when he had calmed down a little from his hysterical laughter could he tell me that to his great regret he was not a ‘doctor of medicine’ but only a ‘doctor of philosophy.’

“At that moment I experienced such a state, as if, as it were, I were for the second time hearing our ENDLESSNESS’s ‘sentence’ of exile passed upon His Reverence and those nearest him, and in consequence upon me.

“Well, our dear Hassein!

“I left the drawing room of that ‘doctor’ and was once more out in the street in the same position as before.

“Just then, a taxi happened to pass.

“I got into it and began to reflect: Where, now?

“I then remembered that in that cafe where I sometimes went, a being also almost always went whom everybody called ‘doctor.’

“I ordered the chauffeur to hurry to this cafe.

“There a waiter known to me told me that this same ‘doctor’ had indeed been there, but he had just left with some of his acquaintances; and that he, the waiter, had accidentally overheard from their conversation that they were going to such and such a restaurant, and gave me the name of this restaurant.