Explore "In Two Moods" by Vladimir Korolenko on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
At the entrance of the restaurant there stood behind the counter, as usual, a young German girl. She smiled a friendly smile, nodded her pretty almost childlike little head, and handed me my dinner-ticket. I bowed in return, and there must have been something peculiar in my expression, for the Fräulein becoming suddenly confused, dropped her eyes before mine, and all her face, even to the delicate, slightly protruding little ears, flushed scarlet.
A maiden, I thought, with a sort of malevolent flippancy; a specimen of restaurant virginity and German innocence. And, in reality, what is German innocence? It is said that if Shakespeare's Teutonic ancestors had not gorged themselves with beer and raw beef his types would not have been characterized by such ungovernable passionateness. I wonder what ingredients have developed in the German nation innocence so extremely delicate. After this mental tirade, I went into the dining-room, where the girl's father, Mr. Schmidt, an exceedingly fat German, with a head that narrowed at the top, and protruding ears like his daughter's, was helping a student to soup with a majestically patronizing air, as if he were conferring on him a benefit for life.