Florence! Crowds, cries, importunate porters and cab-drivers. Wanda chooses a carriage, and dismisses the porters.
"What have I a servant for," she says, "Gregor--here is the ticket-- get the luggage."
She wraps herself in her furs and sits quietly in the carriage while I drag the heavy trunks hither, one after another. I break down for a moment under the last one; a good-natured carabiniere with an intelligent face comes to my assistance. She laughs.
"It must be heavy," said she, "all my furs are in it."
I get up on the driver's seat, wiping drops of perspiration from my brow. She gives the name of the hotel, and the driver urges on his horse. In a few minutes we halt at the brilliantly illuminated entrance.
"Have you any rooms?" she asks the porter.
"Yes, Madame."
"Two for me, one for my servant, all with stoves."
"Two first-class rooms for you, Madame, both with stoves," replied the waiter who had hastily come up, "and one without heat for your servant."
She looked at them, and then abruptly said: "they are satisfactory, have fires built at once; my servant can sleep in the unheated room."
I merely looked at her.
"Bring up the trunks, Gregor," she commands, paying no attention to my looks. "In the meantime I'll be dressing, and then will go down to the dining-room, and you can eat something for supper."
As she goes into the adjoining room, I drag the trunks upstairs and help the waiter build a fire in her bed-room. He tries to question me in bad French about my employer. With a brief glance I see the blazing fire, the fragrant white poster-bed, and the rugs which cover the floor. Tired and hungry I then descend the stairs, and ask for something to eat. A good-natured waiter, who used to be in the Austrian army and takes all sorts of pains to entertain me in German, shows me the dining-room and waits on me. I have just had the first fresh drink in thirty-six hours and the first bite of warm food on my fork, when she enters.
I rise.
"What do you mean by taking me into a dining room in which my servant is eating," she snaps at the waiter, flaring with anger. She turns around and leaves.
Meanwhile I thank heaven that I am permitted to go on eating. Later I climb the four flights upstairs to my room. My small trunk is already there, and a miserable little oil-lamp is burning. It is a narrow room without fireplace, without a window, but with a small air hole. If it weren't so beastly cold, it would remind me of one of the Venetian piombi. [Footnote: These were notorious prisons under the leaden roof of the Palace of the Doges.] Involuntarily I have to laugh out loud, so that it re-echoes, and I am startled by my own laughter.