observed my future wife for quite a while that time in the Sebastiano Room, he had not quite realized the reason for her, to him at first, odd behaviour, it had even occurred to him that she might be about to photograph one of the paintings hanging in the Sebastiano Room, which is strictly forbidden, that in her exceptionally large handbag, a handbag forbidden in the museum, she might have a camera, that is what he thought at first, only later did he realize that she was simply utterly exhausted. People always make the mistake in museums of embarking on too much, of wishing to see everything, so they walk and walk and look and look and then suddenly, because they have devoured a surfeit of art, they collapse. That is what happened to my future wife when Irrsigler took her by the arm and led her to the Bordone Room, as we subsequently established, in the most courteous manner, Reger said. The layman in matters of art goes to a museum and makes it nauseous for himself through excess, Reger said. But of course no advice is possible where visiting a museum is concerned. The expert goes to a museum in order to view at most one picture, Reger said, one statue, one object, Reger said, he goes to the museum to look at, to study, one Veronese, one Velazquez. But these art experts are all utterly distasteful to me, Reger said, they make a bee-line for a single work of art and examine it in their shameless unscrupulous way and walk out of the museum again, I hate those people, Reger said. On the other hand my stomach also turns when I see the layman in the museum, the way he devours everything uncritically, maybe the whole of occidental painting in one morning, as we can witness here day after day. My wife had what is known as acrise de conscience the day I made her acquaintance, chasing through the Inner City for several hours she did not know whether to buy a coat from the firm of Braun or a suit from the firm of Knize. Thus torn between the firm of Braun and the firm of Knize she eventually decided to buy neither a coat from the firm of Braun nor a suit from the firm of Knize but instead to go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where until that day she had been only once, in her early childhood, holding on to her father, who was very keen on art. Irrsigler of course is aware of his role of match-maker, Reger said. If Irrsigler had brought some other woman into the Bordone Room, I often reflect, Reger said, an entirely different woman, Reger repeated, an Englishwoman or a Frenchwoman, it does not bear thinking about, he said. We sit on this settee, utterly desolate, Reger said, more or less depression personified, hopelessness, Reger suggested, and a woman is placed next to us and we marry her and are saved. Millions of married couples have met on a seat, Reger said, indeed this is one of the most fatuous situations imaginable, and yet it is to this fatuous ludicrous situation that I owe my existence, because without meeting my wife I could not have continued to exist, as I now realize more clearly than ever before. For years I had sat on this settee in more or less the deepest despair and suddenly I was saved. I therefore owe to Irrsigler virtually everything that I am, for without Irrsigler I would have long ceased to be here, Reger said at the moment when Irrsigler looked into the Bordone Room from the Sebastiano Room. Towards twelve o'clock the Kunsthistorisches Museum is usually fairly empty, and on this day too there were not many people to be seen about any more and in the so-called Italian Department there was no one left except us. Irrsigler took one step from the Sebastiano Room into the Bordone Room as if to give Reger a chance to voice a request, but Reger had no request and so Irrsigler immediately withdrew again into the Sebastiano Room, he actually backed out of the Bordone Room into the Sebastiano Room. Irrsigler was closer to him than any close relative had ever been, Reger remarked, there is more linking me to that man than ever linked me to one of my relatives, he said. We have always managed to keep our relationship in an ideal equilibrium, Reger said, in this ideal equilibrium for decades. Irrsigler always feels protected by me, even though he has no clear idea in what respect he is being protected by me, just as I in turn always feel protected by Irrsigler, naturally also without any idea of the actual connection, Reger said. I am linked to Irrsigler in the most ideal way, Reger said, it is a positively ideal remote relationship, he remarked. Of course Irrsigler knows nothing about me, Reger said next, and it would be utter nonsense to tell him more about myself, it is just because he knows nothing about me that our relationship is so ideal, just because I myself know as good as nothing about him, Reger said, because all I know about Irrsigler is outward banalities, just as in turn he only knows me from outside in the most banal manner. We should not penetrate into a person with whom we have an ideal relationship more than we have already penetrated, otherwise we destroy that ideal relationship, Reger said. Here Irrsigler calls the tune, Reger said, and I am entirely in his hands, if Irrsigler today said to me, Herr Reger, from today you will no longer sit on this settee there is nothing I can do about it, Reger said, because after all it is madness to come to the Kunsthistorisches Museum for thirty years and to occupy the Bordone Room settee. I do not believe that Irrsigler has ever informed his superiors of the fact that I have been coming to the Kunsthistorisches Museum for thirty years and have been sitting on the Bordone Room settee every other day, I am sure he has not, from what I know of him he realizes that he must not do so, that the administration must not know about it. People are always very ready to send a person like me to the lunatic asylum, that is to Steinhof, when they learn that a person has been going to the Kunsthistorisches Museum for thirty years in order to sit on the Bordone Room settee every other day. That would be a real gift to the psychiatrists, Reger said. To get into a lunatic asylum a person has no need to sit on the Bordone Room settee every other day for thirty years, in front of Tintoretto's White-Bearded Man, it would be quite enough for a person to have this habit for a mere two or three weeks, yet I have had this habit for over thirty years, Reger said. And I never gave up the habit when I got married, on the contrary, with my wife I even intensified this habit of going to the Kunsthistorisches Museum every other day and sitting on the Bordone Room settee. I would be a welcome gift, a real gold mine, as the saying goes, for the psychiatrists, but the psychiatrists will not be given an opportunity to have me as a welcome gift and a gold mine, Reger said. After all, there are thousands of people in psychiatric hospitals who, so to speak, have committed some crazy act which is not nearly as crazy as mine, Reger said. There are people detained in psychiatric hospitals who just once failed to raise their hand when they should have raised it, Reger said, who just once said White instead of Black, Reger said, just try to imagine that. But I am not really crazy, he said, I am just a person of extraordinary habits, a person with one extraordinary habit, to wit the extraordinary habit of going to the Kunsthistorisches Museum every other day for the past thirty years and of sitting on the Bordone Room settee. Whereas to my wife it was