The Afternoon Sun [antikvár]

Gustav Ellingen was a legend in his day. How was it done ? The question was put to him even by people born to privileges and therefore without real interest in those who had made their own way. His answers were not always the same, and that too was legendary. 'Once an orphan always an orphan,' he might say. 'To have nothing to lose is the beginning of true opportunity.' cBut you are a famous industrialist, a landowner, one of the richest men in the country. In the streets they point at you driving past and say, there goes Gustav Ellingen/ 'Measures must be taken at all times to avoid the stupidity of others.' At least he was fulfilled, and if he was not fulíilled, at least he was successful. In the example, there was hope. Those listening to Gustav Ellingen, in the course of doing business with him or at one of his dinners, perceived how his own story touched in him a wonder for the gift of life. Essential to the phenomenon was his physical appearance. He was not much more than íive foot. No tailor could hide the unbalanced shape. More than greed, the appetite was an expression of vitality. As others might exercise, so he ate. Veal, for half an hour, he once replied to a head-waiter who had asked what he wanted to order. When he sat in a chair, his legs and knees were pressed apart by the weight of flesh. Putting on or taking off his shoes involved a dressing-room ritual, with Burschen Franz, always so nicknamed, or Boy Franz, his valet, kneeling on the floor. Early in life he had lost his hair. Only grizzled stubble remained, in a line like a water-mark. Sensitive on this single aspect of his appearance, he had the habit of running a hand