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When the schoolmaster came back and realised the trick played on him, he grew pale with anger; he immediately suspected the bookseller; but when his eyes fell on Gustav who was standing in a corner of the room, laughing, his old obsession returned to him: “He’s paying me out!” Without a word he seized his property, threw a few coins on the counter and left the restaurant.

Henceforth the schoolmaster avoided Rejner’s. The bookseller had heard that he dined at a restaurant in his own district. This was true. But he was very discontented! The food was not actually bad, but it was not cooked to his liking. The waiters were not attentive. He often thought of returning to Rejner’s, but his pride would not let him. He had been turned out of his home; in five minutes a bond of many years’ standing had been severed.

A short time after fate struck him a fresh blow. Miss Augusta had inherited a little fortune in the provinces and had decided to leave Stockholm on the first of October. The schoolmaster had to look out for new lodgings.

But he had been spoilt, and there was no pleasing him. He changed his room every month. There was nothing wrong with the rooms, but they were not like his old room. It had become such a habit with him to walk through certain streets, that he often found himself before his old front door before he realised his mistake. He was like a lost child.

Eventually he went to live in a boarding house, a solution which he had always loathed and dreaded. And then his friends lost sight of him altogether.

One evening, as the Pole was sitting alone over his grog, smoking, drinking, and nodding with the capacity of the oriental to lapse into complete stupor, the bookseller burst in on him like a thunderstorm, flung his hat on the table, and shouted:

“Confound him! Has anybody ever heard anything like it?”

The Pole roused himself from his brandy-and-tobacco Nirvana, and rolled his eyes.

“I say, confound it! Has anybody ever heard anything like it? He’s going to be married!”

“Who’s going to be married?” asked the Pole, startled by the bookseller’s violence and emphatic language.

“Schoolmaster Blom!”

The bookseller expected a glass of grog in exchange for his news. The proprietor left the counter and came to their table to listen.

“Has she any money?” he asked acutely.

“I don’t think so,” replied the bookseller, conscious of his temporary importance and selling his wares one by one.

“Is she beautiful?” asked the Pole. “My wife was very beautiful. Ugh!”

“No, she’s not beautiful either,” answered the bookseller, “but nice-looking.”

“Have you seen her?” enquired the proprietor. “Is she old?” His eyes wandered towards the kitchen door.

“No, she’s young!”

“And her parents?” continued the proprietor.

“I heard that her father was a brass founder in Orebro.”

“The rascal! Well, I never!” said the proprietor.

“Haven’t I always said so? The man is a born husband,” said the bookseller.

“We all of us are,” said the proprietor, “and take my word for it, no one escapes his fate!”

With this philosophical remark he closed the subject and returned to the counter.

When they had settled that the schoolmaster was not marrying for money, they discussed the problem of “what the young people were going to live on.” The bookseller made a guess at the schoolmaster’s salary and “what he might earn besides by giving private lessons.” When that question, too, had been settled, the proprietor, who had returned to the table, asked for details.

“Where had he met her? Was she fair or dark? Was she in love with him?”

The last question was by no means out of the way; the bookseller “thought she was,” for he had seen them together, arm in arm, looking into shop windows.

“But that he, who was such a stick, could fall in love! It was incredible!”

“And what a husband he would make!” The proprietor knew that he was devilish particular about his food, and that, he said, was a mistake when one was married.