Fabian comes to the defense of a little girl who stole an ashtray

Jakob Fabian comes to the defense of a little girl who stole an ashtray in a department store, interrupting an adult crowd’s rush to punish her and buying the object so she can give it to her father for his birthday. The episode makes Fabian’s moral instinct practical: faced with a small act of theft and a disproportionate public denunciation, he protects the child, pays for what she took, and sends her away with her intended gift.

The accusation in the store

While shopping for cotton socks, Fabian puts down his book and goes downstairs. In the department’s porcelain and ceramic-art section, he finds a crowd gathered around a weeping girl of about ten. She carries a schoolbag, is dressed poorly, trembles, and looks in terror at the adults’ angry faces. The scene begins not with the child’s explanation but with the adults’ verdict: an elderly woman says she caught the girl stealing a small, brightly colored ashtray, and the department head orders her taken to the director.

A saleswoman repeats the command, grabs the girl by the shoulder, and joins the effort to make the child answer for the theft. Fabian pushes through the gathering and orders the woman to let go. When a voice challenges his right to interfere, he taps the saleswoman’s fingers to make her release the child, then draws the girl to his side. The adults’ attention is fixed on the offense and the authority to punish; Fabian shifts the encounter toward the child’s reason for taking the dish.

Fabian’s intervention

Fabian asks why she chose an ashtray and whether she already smokes cigars. The girl explains that she had no money, then rises onto her toes to add the circumstance that changes the scene: her father’s birthday is that day. Her explanation does not erase the theft, but it places it within a child’s attempt to bring her father a present. The crowd’s contempt remains audible: one woman insists that stealing for lack of money is becoming intolerable.

Fabian does not argue over whether the child deserves punishment in the abstract. He tells the saleswoman to write a sales slip and says that they will keep the ashtray. When the department head insists that the girl must be punished, Fabian threatens to smash the porcelain shop if his proposal is opposed. The manager shrugs; the saleswoman writes the slip and sends the ashtray for delivery. Fabian goes to the cashier, pays, and receives the parcel. His intervention thus converts the object at the center of the accusation from stolen property into a purchased birthday gift, while making the store’s own transaction the means of ending the confrontation.

The gift and its fragile comedy

Fabian accompanies the girl to the exit and gives her the package, warning her to take care that it does not break. To make the warning vivid, he tells her about a boy who bought his mother a large cooking pot for Christmas. At the door, the pot broke; left holding only its handle, the boy could offer his mother the handle instead. Fabian’s little tale turns a practical caution into a comic miniature about how easily a carefully intended gift can be damaged.

The girl answers that her ashtray has no handle. She curtsies, runs off holding the parcel in both hands, then turns back to call her thanks before disappearing. Her reply punctures the imagined mishap without diminishing the kindness of the warning. The scene closes not on the adults’ judgment but on the girl carrying away the gift she had hoped to give her father.

Moral significance and contrast

The episode’s moral force lies in the difference between formal condemnation and attention to circumstance. The crowd sees a thief; Fabian sees a frightened child who has taken a birthday present because she cannot afford to buy one. He neither denies what happened nor leaves the girl to bear its consequences alone: he pays for the ashtray himself and directly challenges the department head’s demand for punishment. The episode therefore defines his intervention through action rather than a general declaration of virtue.

That small act belongs to a novel presented by its author as a moral satire and a warning, not a photographic record of urban life. Its preface describes exaggeration and caricature as the moralist’s means of making an age confront what it might otherwise ignore. In this episode, the compressed public spectacle—the frightened child, the indignant crowd, the manager’s authority, and Fabian’s threat—makes the adults’ punitive certainty look less like justice than a reflex. The scene does not claim to repair the poverty behind the girl’s lack of money; it shows Fabian answering one immediate injustice by protecting her dignity and ensuring that her father receives the present she set out to give him.