what will happen to him if he opts not to go into the bureaucracy but to go home to run one of his father’s estates. If Scharlach visits him in ten years he will find a well-fed Landwehr [militia—JS] officer with a moustache, who curses and swears a justifiable hatred of Frenchmen and Jews until the earth trembles, and beats his dogs and his servants in the most brutal fashion, even if he is tyrannized by his wife. I will wear leather trousers and allow myself to be ridiculed at the Wool Market in Stettin, and when anyone calls me Herr Baron, I’ll stroke my moustache in good humour and sell
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