Besides,
his physician had not actually forbidden him a little liquid at the
midday meal. Just before bedtime he was entitled--so his dietetic
schedule told him--to one glass of Pilsner beer. Not so bad, after all,
this banting at Marienbad, he reflected. Anyhow, it was better than the
existence of those fellows at sea-shore and mountain, who gorged and
guzzled their summer away. Then he tried to remember among his London
club friends any who were as heavy as he, but he could not. Idly
smoking, he regarded the piazzas, with their tables and groups of obese
humanity, eating, drinking, and buzzing--little fat flies, he thought,
as he drew his waistcoat in, feeling quite haughty and slender.
He read on a placard that the "Praeger Bavarian Sextet" would give a
"grand" concert at the Hotel Bellevue this very afternoon. "Ah ha!" said
Krayne aloud, "that's the girl I saw!" Then he wasted several hours more
loitering about the beautiful park on the Kaiserstrasse and looking in
the shop windows at views of Marienbad on postal cards, at
yellow-covered French, German, and Russian novels, at pictures of kings,
queens, and actresses.
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