We go to the parade ground. The company has fallen in, Mittelstaedt stands them at ease and inspects.

Then I see Kantorek and am scarcely able to stifle my laughter. He is wearing a faded blue tunic. On the back and in the sleeves there are big dark patches. The tunic must have belonged to a giant. The black, worn breeches are just as much too short; they reach barely halfway down his calf. The boots, tough old clodhoppers, with turned-up toes and laces at the side are much too big for him. But as a compensation the cap is too small, a terribly dirty, mean little pillbox. The whole rig-out is just pitiful.

Mittelstaedt stops in front of him: “Territorial Kantorek, do you call those buttons polished? You seem as though you can never learn. Inadequate, Kantorek, quite inadequate⁠—”

It makes me bubble with glee. In school Kantorek used to chasten Mittelstaedt with exactly the same expression⁠—“Inadequate, Mittelstaedt, quite inadequate.”