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He took more pains than usual with his toilet, washed and shaved with great care, and made himself as fresh and neat as if he were planning to make a call in some aristocratic, highly proper house, where it was necessary to make a smart and irreproachable impression; and during the manipulations of dressing he listened to the alarmed throbbing of his heart.

How bright it was outside. He would have felt more comfortable if there had been twilight in the streets, as when he came; but now he was to walk through the bright sunshine under the people’s eyes. Would he hit upon acquaintances, be stopped and questioned, and have to give an account of how he had spent these thirteen years? No, thank the Lord, no one would know him any more, and those who remembered him would not recognize him, for he had really altered a little in the meantime. He regarded himself attentively in the mirror, and suddenly felt more secure behind his mask, behind his prematurely work-lined face, which was older than his years … He sent for breakfast and then went out, out through the vestibule past the appraising glances of the porter and the elegant gentleman in black, out into the open between the two lions.

Whither was he going? He hardly knew. It was like yesterday. Scarcely did he again see himself surrounded by this queerly venerable and eternally familiar mixture of gables, turrets, arcades, and fountains, scarcely did he again feel on his face the pressure of the wind, the strong wind that brought with it a delicate and pungent aroma from far-away dreams, than something like a veil, a fabric of fog, enveloped his senses … The muscles of his face relaxed; and with quieted eyes he contemplated men and things. Perhaps he would awake none the less on that street corner yonder …

Whither was he going? It seemed to him as if the direction he took had some connection with his sad and strangely penitent dreams by night … To the market he went, through the vaulted arches of the city hall, where butchers weighed their wares with blood-stained hands, and to the market-place, where the high, pointed, and variegated Gothic fountain stood. There he stood still before a house, a narrow, simple house, like many others, with an openwork gable of curving lines, and became lost in contemplation of it. He read the name-plate on the door, and let his eyes rest a while on each window. Then he turned slowly away.

Whither was he going? Homeward. But he chose a roundabout way, taking a walk out beyond the gate, for there was plenty of time. He went across the Mill Rampart and the Holsten Rampart, holding his hat firmly against the wind that creaked and groaned in the trees. Then he forsook the park strip along the ramparts not far from the station, watched a train puff by in clumsy haste, counted the cars to pass the time, and looked after the man who sat perched high on the last one. But he came to a stop on the square with the lindens before one of the pretty villas that stood there, looked long into the garden and up at the windows, and finally took a notion to swing the garden-gate back and forth and make the hinges screech. Then he contemplated for a time his hand, which had become cold and rusty, and went on, through the old square-built gate, along the harbor, and up the steep, draughty, and wet Gable Street to the house of his parents.

Closed in by the neighboring houses which its gable overtopped, it stood there gray and forbidding as for these three hundred years past, and Tonio Kröger read the pious legend that was above the door in half effaced letters. Then he drew a deep breath and went in.