Now we were seated and while, at the next table, an animated group chatted merrily, I looked at my new acquaintance and certainly not with stealthy sideways glances, but point blank through the paraffin lamp's glow, and my astonishment grew with my scrutiny.
Circuit Judge Löhnefinke from Gross-Fauhlenberg was a man of approximately fifty years of age, corpulent, as we have already commented, and otherwise without any external distinguishing marks. He had a broad chin and his hair was short and sprinkled with grey. He had the beard of a Prussian official and two clever, grey eyes which took in every object they tacked on to. None of this gave me any reason to suppose that the man was a candidate for a loony bin and yet--I couldn't help it! Laying my hand on his arm and pulling myself up close to him, I said:
"Don't take this the wrong way, Löhnefinke, but right now I don't believe it happened any more."
"Your appearance just now. Your breakneck fall down the dune, that daredevil slide near Wenningstedt or, to put it in a nutshell, your vision of the moon as your enemy."
Immediately there came an extraordinary change over the whole of this man sitting right next to me. He once more took evasive action and as he had formerly grasped my umbrella, now he grasped the glass in front of him, knocked back the hot, steaming mixture therein in one long swig and hissed through his teeth:
"It's quite true nevertheless. I hate the moon. It's my deadliest enemy and I am eclipsed by it as it is eclipsed itself by that paraffin lamp swinging above us."
I waved to the waitress, who understood my wave and put another steaming glass down right under my colleague's nose.
"Thank you," said the judge. "And I have you to thank as well for, had I not fallen into the arms of yourself and your umbrella, I really don't know what would have become of me on that shadowless beach."
"Colleague," I said, "I am a law-abiding man and have attended to my official duties for many years now to the satisfaction of my official subordinates and the powers that be. I keep my medal for services rendered at home in a filing cabinet and have never knowingly divulged any secret confided in me, scout's honour. Would you take it amiss, colleague, if I asked you to tell me how you came to quarrel with that innocent satellite revolving round our sinful earth?"