His behavior and personality, with its flavour of importance, combined with obvious awkwardness and the strange inability "ever" to complete a statement, is reminiscent of certain figures in former novellas of the author (e.g., "Herr Klöterjahn" in Tristan) – figures, which are, on the one hand, "admired" because of their vital energy, and, on the other hand, "condemned" because of their naïveté.