I had never invited him before but did so this time because the other evening at the Richters I heard him talk amusingly about his adventures in Paris as second secretary at the German embassy. I wanted to hear more. And I was sure the other guests who had not met him before — Liselotte Korf, the succès fou as Papagena at the moment, and the lively Doctor Herbert Loser from the Paul Ehrlich Institute and a few others — would enjoy him, too. Hermann could not be there, because he was working on a case. Oh, to be a handsome young bachelor on the Left Bank! Klaus had confessed at the Richters’ dinner party that there was one spot near the Café de Flore that he could never pass without blushing. When we all insisted he tell us why — we could not imagine what could possibly make this worldly young man blush — he refused. He was absolutely adamant. No enticement we could think of, including a night with the opera ballet’s prima ballerina, could move him. But this time, on a very different subject, when it was only a matter of international diplomacy, he eventually yielded quite amiably to collective pressure.
