At this I had to laugh to myself, and I may admit that in her exuberance I liked Frau Aebi very much. She wanted to have me near her the whole afternoon, and was almost a little indignant when I told her that it was, unfortunately for me, an impossible thing for me to afford her my company any longer, because I had to settle certain important affairs, which I could not put off. It was extremely flattering to me to hear Frau Aebi so vigorously regretting that I had to leave again so soon and wanted to. She asked me if it was really so pressingly urgent to abscond and vanish, whereupon I gave her the most holy assurances that only the most pressing urgencies had the ability and power to draw me away so soon from such a pleasant house and from such an attractive, esteemed person, with which words I look my leave of her.
It was now meet to conquer, master, surprise, and abash in his unshakable convictions an obstinate, recalcitrant tailor, or marchand tailleur, a person obviously in every respect convinced of the infallibility of his doubtless eminent skill, and completely saturated with a sense of his own efficiency. The crippling of a master tailor’s fixity of mind must be considered one of the most difficult and hazardous tasks which courage can undertake and daredevil determination determine to carry forward. Of tailors and their opinions I have a comprehensive, constant, and intense fear; I am not at all ashamed of this sad admission; for fear is, in this instance, explicable and understandable. I was, then, prepared for trouble, perhaps even for trouble of the worst and most terrible kind, and I armed myself for this highly perilous attack with qualities such as courage, scorn, wrath, indignation, disdain, even the disdain of death; and with these indubitably very appreciable weapons I hoped to advance, successfully and victoriously, against biting irony and mockery lurking under a simulation of friendliness. It turned out otherwise; but I will be silent on this point till later, particularly as first I still have to dispatch a letter. For I have just decided to go first to the post office, then to the tailor, and only after this to pay my taxes. Besides, the post office, a tasteful building, lay right in front of my nose; and I blithely went in and besought the responsible post office official for a stamp, which I stuck upon the envelope. While I then circumspectly slipped the same down into the letter box, I examined and weighed pensively, in my mind, what I had written. As I very well knew, the contents were as follows:
Most respectable Sir,
The curious form of address should bring you the assurance that the writer confronts you quite coldly. I know that respect of myself is not to be expected from you, nor from any persons of your sort; for you and persons of your sort have an exorbitant opinion of themselves, which hinders them from achieving understanding and discretion. I know with certainty that you are one of those people who seem to themselves important because they are inconsiderate and discourteous, who think themselves powerful because they enjoy protection, and believe themselves wise because the little word “wise” happens to occur to them. People like you are so bold as to be hard, impudent, coarse, and violent with regard to people who are poor and unprotected. People like you possess the extraordinary wit to believe that it is necessary to be everywhere on top, to keep everywhere the ascendancy, and to triumph at every moment of the day. People like you do not observe that this is foolish, that it neither lies within the bounds of possibility nor is in any way to be desired. People like you are snobs and are ready at all times industriously to serve brutality. People like you are exceedingly courageous in the evasion of any sort of genuine courage, because they know that this true courage promises to injure them; and they are courageous in demonstrating with an uncommon degree of pleasure and an uncommon degree of zeal their right to set up as the good and the beautiful. People like you respect neither old age nor merit, and certainly not hard work. People like you respect money, and your respect of money obstructs any higher estimation of other things. He who works honestly, and diligently exerts himself, is in the eyes of people like you an outspoken ass. I do not err; for my little finger can tell me that I am right. I dare tell you to your face that you abuse your position because you know full well how many complications and annoyances would be entailed if anyone were to rap your knuckles; but in the grace and favor which you enjoy, ensconced in your privileged prescriptive position, you are still wide open to attack; for you feel without a doubt how insecure you are. You betray confidence, do not keep your word, injure without a second thought the virtues and reputations of those who have to deal with you; you rob unsparingly where you pretend to institute beneficence, impose upon the services and denigrate the person of every willing servant, you are exceedingly fickle and unreliable, and show qualities which one might willingly pardon in a girl, but not in a man. Forgive me that I should have allowed myself to think you very weak, and accept, with the candid assurance that I consider it advisable to avoid any future contact with you in my affairs, the required measure and the established degree of respect from a person upon whom devolved the distinction and inevitably moderate pleasure of having made your acquaintance.
I almost regretted now that I had entrusted to the post for dispatch and delivery this cutthroat’s letter, for as such it now subsequently appeared to me: indeed, to no less than a leading, influential personality I had in such an ideal manner proclaimed, thus conjuring up a furious state of war, the rupture of diplomatic or, better, economic relations. Still, I unleashed my challenge, while I consoled myself with the reflection that this personality, or most respectable sir, would perhaps never even read my communication, because, on perusing and relishing even the second or third word of it, he would probably have had quite enough, and he would presumably hurl the blazing effusion, without losing much time or energy about it, into his all-devouring, all-accommodating wastepaper basket. “Besides, in the course of nature, a thing like this is forgotten in six or three months,” I concluded and philosophized and marched, bravement, to my tailor.
The same sat happily, and with what seemed the clearest conscience in the world, in his elegant fashion salon or workshop, which was stuffed and crammed with subtly fragrant rolls and remnants of cloth. In an aviary, or cage, blustered, to complete the idyllic scene, a bird, and a keen crafty apprentice was nicely occupied with cutting out. Herr Dünn the master tailor rose as he caught sight of me most courteously from his seat, upon which he had been diligently fencing with his needle, to bid the visitor a friendly welcome. “You have come about your suit, an unquestionably impeccable fit, which is soon to be delivered complete and finished by my firm,” he said, as he tendered me, perhaps a little too companionably, his hand, which I nevertheless was not in the least hesitant vigorously to shake. “I have come,” I parried, “to proceed dauntlessly and full of hope to the fitting, though I have my fears.”
Herr Dünn said that he considered all my fears to be superfluous and that he guaranteed both the fit and the cut, and, as he was saying this, he accompanied me into an adjoining room, from which he himself at once withdrew. He guaranteed and protested repeatedly, and this did not really quite please me. The fitting, and the disappointment which was so intimately connected with it, was soon complete. I shouted, attempting meanwhile to fight back an overflowing chargin, loudly and energetically for Herr Dünn, at whom, with the greatest possible composure and genteel dissatisfaction, I flung the annihilating outburst: “It’s exactly as I thought!”