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Royal Highness

by Thomas Mann · English · Gutenberg #36028 · 694,511 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Royal Highness

Author: Thomas Mann

Translator: A. Cecil Curtis


        
Release date: May 3, 2011 [eBook #36028]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36028

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Jana Srna and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


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Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Jana Srna and the Online
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  [ Transcriber's Notes:

    Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully
    as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation,
    and ellipsis usage. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation
    have been made. They are listed at the end of the text.

    Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
  ]




  ROYAL HIGHNESS

  Translated from the German of
  THOMAS MANN
  by A. Cecil Curtis

  GROSSET & DUNLAP
  Publishers
  by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf


  COPYRIGHT, 1909, S. FISCHER, VERLAG

  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




CONTENTS


  Prelude                           vii

  CHAPTER I
  The Constriction                    1

  CHAPTER II
  The Country                        25

  CHAPTER III
  Hinnerke the Shoemaker             37

  CHAPTER IV
  Doctor Ueberbein                   64

  CHAPTER V
  Albrecht II                       110

  CHAPTER VI
  The Lofty Calling                 146

  CHAPTER VII
  Imma                              168

  CHAPTER VIII
  The Fulfilment                    265

  CHAPTER IX
  The Rose-Bush                     328




PRELUDE


The scene is the Albrechtstrasse, the main artery of the capital, which
runs from Albrechtsplatz and the Old Schloss to the barracks of the
Fusiliers of the Guard. The time is noon on an ordinary week-day; the
season of the year does not matter. The weather is fair to moderate. It
is not raining, but the sky is not clear; it is a uniform light grey,
uninteresting and sombre, and the street lies in a dull and sober light
which robs it of all mystery, all individuality. There is a moderate
amount of traffic, without much noise and crowd, corresponding to the
not over-busy character of the town. Tram-cars glide past, a cab or two
rolls by, along the pavement stroll a few residents, colourless folk,
passers-by, the public--"people."

Two officers, their hands in the slanting pockets of their grey
great-coats, approach each other; a general and a lieutenant. The
general is coming from the Schloss, the lieutenant from the direction of
the barracks. The lieutenant is quite young, a mere stripling, little
more than a child. He has narrow shoulders, dark hair, and the wide
cheek-bones so common in this part of the world, blue rather
tired-looking eyes, and a boyish face with a kind but reserved
expression. The general has snow-white hair, is tall and
broad-shouldered, altogether a commanding figure. His eyebrows look like
cotton-wool, and his moustache hangs right down over his mouth and chin.
He walks with slow deliberation, his sword rattles on the asphalt, his
plume flutters in the wind, and at every step he takes the big red lapel
of his coat flaps slowly up and down.

And so these two draw near each other. Can this rencontre lead to any
complication? Impossible. Every observer can foresee the course this
meeting will naturally take. We have on one side and the other age and
youth, authority and obedience, years of services and docile
apprenticeship--a mighty hierarchical gulf, rules and prescriptions,
separate the two. Natural organization, take thy course! And, instead,
what happens? Instead, the following surprising, painful, delightful,
and topsy-turvy scene occurs.

The general, noticing the young lieutenant's approach, alters his
bearing in a surprising manner. He draws himself up, yet at the same
time seems to get smaller. He tones down with a jerk, so to speak, the
splendour of his appearance, stops the clatter of his sword, and, while
his face assumes a cross and embarrassed expression, he obviously cannot
make up his mind where to turn his eyes, and tries to conceal the fact
by staring from under his cotton-wool eyebrows at the asphalt straight
in front of him.

The young lieutenant too betrays to the careful observer some slight
embarrassment, which however, strange to say, he seems to succeed,
better than the grey-haired general, in cloaking with a certain grace
and self-command. The tension of his mouth is relaxed into a smile at
once modest and genial, and his eyes are directed with a quiet and
self-possessed calm, seemingly without an effort, over the general's
shoulder and beyond.

By now they have come within three paces of each other. And, instead of
the prescribed salute, the young lieutenant throws his head slightly
back, at the same time draws his right hand--only his right, mark
you--out of his coat-pocket and makes with this same white-gloved right
hand a little encouraging and condescending movement, just opening the
fingers with palm upwards, nothing more. But the general, who has
awaited this sign with his arms to his sides, raises his hand to his
helmet, steps aside, bows, making a half-circle as if to leave the
pavement free, and deferentially greets the lieutenant with reddening
cheeks and honest modest eyes. Thereupon the lieutenant, his hand to his
cap, answers the respectful greeting of his superior officer--answers it
with a look of child-like friendliness; answers it--and goes on his way.

A miracle! A freak of fancy! He goes on his way. People look at him, but
he looks at nobody, looks straight ahead through the crowd, with
something of the air of a woman who knows that she is being looked at.
People greet him; he returns the greeting, heartily and yet distantly.
He seems not to walk very easily; it looks as if he were not much
accustomed to the use of his legs, or as if the general attention he
excites bothers him, so irregular and hesitating is his gait; indeed, at
times he seems to limp. A policeman springs to attention, a smart woman,
coming out of a shop, smiles and curtseys. People turn round to look at
him, nudge each other, stare at him, and softly whisper his name....

It is Klaus Heinrich, the younger brother of Albrecht II, and heir
presumptive to the throne. There he goes, he is still in view. Known and
yet a stranger, he moves among the crowd--people all around him, and yet
as if alone. He goes on his lonely way and carries on his narrow
shoulders the burden of his Highness!




I

THE CONSTRICTION


Artillery salvos were fired when the various new-fangled means of
communication in the capital spread the news that the Grand Duchess
Dorothea had given birth to a prince for the second time at Grimmburg.
Seventy-two rounds resounded through the town and surrounding country,
fired by the military in the walls of the "Citadel." Directly afterwards
the fire brigade also, not to be outdone, fired with the town
salute-guns; but in their firing there were long pauses between each
round, which caused much merriment among the populace.

The Grimmburg looked down from the top of a woody hill on the
picturesque little town of the same name, which mirrored its grey
sloping roofs in the river which flowed past it. It could be reached
from the capital in half an hour by a local railway which paid no
dividends. There the castle stood, the proud creation of the Margrave
Klaus Grimmbart, the founder of the reigning house in the dim mists of
history, since then several times rejuvenated and repaired, fitted with
the comforts of the changing times, always kept in a habitable state and
held in peculiar honour as the ancestral seat of the ruling house, the
cradle of the dynasty. For it was a rule and tradition of the house that
all direct descendants of the Margrave, every child of the reigning
couple, must be born there.

This tradition could not be ignored. The country had had sophisticated
and unbelieving sovereigns, who had laughed at it, and yet had complied
with it with a shrug of the shoulders. It was now much too late to break
away from it whether it was reasonable and enlightened or not: why,
without any particular necessity, break with an honoured custom, which
had managed somehow to perpetuate itself? The people were convinced that
there was something in it. Twice in the course of fifteen generations
had children of reigning sovereigns, owing to some chance or other,
first seen the light in other schlosses: each had come to an unnatural
and disgraceful end. But all the sovereigns of the land and their
brothers and sisters, from Henry the Confessor and John the Headstrong,
with their lovely and proud sisters, down to Albrecht, the father of the
Grand Duke, and the Grand Duke himself, Johann Albrecht III, had been
brought into the world in the castle; and there, six years before,
Dorothea had given birth to her firstborn, the Heir Apparent.

The castle was also a retreat as dignified as it was peaceful. The
coolness of its rooms, the shady charms of its surroundings, made it
preferable as a summer residence to the stiff Hollerbrunn. The ascent
from the town, up a rather badly paved street between shabby cottages
and a scrubby wall, through massive gates to the ancient ruin at the
entrance to the castle-yard, in the middle of which stood the statue of
Klaus Grimmbart, the founder, was picturesque but tiring. But a noble
park spread at the back of the castle hill, through which easy paths led
up into the wooded and gently-swelling uplands, offering ideal
opportunities for carriage drives and quiet strolls.

As for the inside of the castle, it had been last subjected at the
beginning of the reign of Johann Albrecht III to a thorough clean-up and
redecoration--at a cost which had evoked much comment. The furniture of
the living-rooms had been completed and renewed in a style at once
baronial and comfortable; the escutcheons in the "Hall of Justice" had
been carefully restored to their original pattern. The gilding of the
intricate patterns on the vaulted ceilings looked fresh and cheerful,
all the rooms had been fitted with parquet, and both the larger and the
smaller banqueting-halls had been adorned with huge wall-paintings from
the brush of Professor von Lindemann, a distinguished Academician,
representing scenes from the history of the reigning House executed in a
clear and smooth style which was far removed from and quite unaffected
by the restless tendencies of modern schools. Nothing was wanting. As
the old chimneys of the castle and its many-coloured stoves, reaching
tier upon tier right up to the ceiling, were no longer fit to use,
anthracite stoves had been installed in view of the possibility of the
place being used as a residence during the winter.

But the day of the seventy-two salvos fell in the best time of the year,
late spring, early summer, the beginning of June, soon after
Whitsuntide. Johann Albrecht, who had been early informed by telegram
that the labour had begun just before dawn, reached Grimmburg Station by
the bankrupt local railway at eight o'clock, where he was greeted with
congratulations by three or four dignitaries, the mayor, the judge, the
rector, and the town physician. He at once drove to the castle. The
Grand Duke was accompanied by Minister of State, Dr. Baron Knobelsdorff,
and Adjutant-General of Infantry, Count Schmettern. Shortly afterwards
two or three more ministers arrived at the royal residence, the Court
Chaplin Dom Wislezenus, President of the High Consistory, one or two
Court officials, and a still younger Adjutant, Captain von Lichterloh.
Although the Grand Duke's Physician-in-Ordinary, Surgeon-General Dr.
Eschrich, was attending the mother, Johann Albrecht had been seized with
the whim of requiring the young local doctor, a Doctor Sammet, who was
of Jewish extraction into the bargain, to accompany him to the castle.
The unassuming, hard-working, and earnest man, who had as much as he
could do and was not in the least expecting any such distinction,
stammered "Quite delighted ... quite delighted" several times over, thus
provoking some amusement.

The Grand Duchess's bedroom was the "Bride-chamber," a five-cornered,
brightly painted room on the first floor, through whose window a fine
view could be obtained of woods, hills, and the windings of the river.
It was decorated with a frieze of medallion-shaped portraits, likenesses
of royal brides who had slept there in the olden days of the family
history.

There lay Dorothea; a broad piece of webbing was tied round the foot of
her bed, to which she clung like a child playing at horses, while
convulsions shook her lovely frame. Doctor Gnadebusch, the midwife, a
gentle and learned woman with small fine hands and brown eyes, which
wore a look of mystery behind her round, thick spectacles, was
supporting the Duchess, while she said:

"Steady, steady, your Royal Highness.... It will soon be over. It's
quite easy.... Just once more ... that's nothing.... Rest a bit: knees
apart.... Keep your chin down...."

A nurse, dressed like her in white linen, helped too, and moved
lightly about with phials and bandages during the pauses. The
Physician-in-Ordinary, a gloomy man with a greyish beard, whose left
eyelid seemed to droop, superintended the birth. He wore his
operating-coat over his surgeon-general's uniform. From time to time
there peeped into the room, to ascertain the progress of the confinement,
Dorothea's trusty Mistress of the Robes, Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen,
a corpulent and asthmatic woman of distinctly dragoon-like
appearance, who nevertheless liked to display a generous
expanse of neck and shoulders at the court balls. She kissed her
mistress's hand and went back to an adjoining room, in which a couple of
thin ladies-in-waiting were chatting with the Grand Duchess's
Chamberlain-in-Waiting, a Count Windisch. Dr. Sammet, who had thrown his
linen coat like a domino over his dress-coat, was waiting modestly and
attentively by the washstand.

Johann Albrecht sat in a neighbouring room used as a study, which was
separated from the "Bride-chamber" only by a so-called powder closet and
a passage-room. It was called the library, in view of several manuscript
folios, which lay slanting in the massive book-shelves and contained the
history of the castle. The room was furnished as a writing-room. Globes
adorned the walls. The strong wind from the hills blew through the open
bow-window. The Grand Duke had ordered tea, and the groom of the
chamber, Prahl, had himself brought the tray; but it was standing
forgotten on the leaf of the desk, and Johann Albrecht was pacing the
room from one corner to the other in a restless, uncomfortable frame of
mind. His top-boots kept creaking as he walked. His aide-de-camp, von
Lichterloh, listened to the noise, as he waited patiently in the almost
bare passage-room.

The Minister, the Adjutant-General, the Court Chaplain, and the Court
officials, nine or ten in all, were waiting in the state-room on the
ground floor. They wandered through the larger and the smaller
banqueting-halls, where trophies of banners and weapons hung between
Lindemann's pictures. They leaned against the slender pillars, which
spread into brightly coloured vaulting above their heads. They stood
before the narrow, ceiling-high windows, and looked out through the
leaded panes over river and town; they sat on the stone benches which
ran round the walls, or on seats before the stoves, whose Gothic tops
were supported by ridiculous little stooping imps of stone. The bright
sunlight made the gold lace on the uniforms, the orders on the padded
chests, the broad gold stripes on the trousers of the dignitaries
glisten.

The conversation flagged. Three-cornered hats and white-gloved hands
were constantly being raised to mouths which opened convulsively. Nearly
everybody had tears in his eyes. Several had not had time to get any
breakfast. Some sought entertainment in a timid examination of the
operating-instruments and the round leather-cased chloroform jar, which
Surgeon-General Eschrich had left there in case of emergency. After von
Bühl zu Bühl, the Lord Marshal, a powerful man with mincing manners,
brown toupée, gold-rimmed pince-nez, and long, yellow fingernails, had
told several anecdotes in his quick, jerky way, he dropped into an
armchair, in which he made use of his gift of being able to sleep with
his eyes open--of losing consciousness of time and place while retaining
a steady gaze and alert attitude, and in no way imperilling the dignity
of the situation.

Dr. von Schröder, Minister of Finance and Agriculture, had had a
conversation earlier in the day with the Minister of State, Dr. Baron
Knobelsdorff, Minister of Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and the Grand
Ducal Household. It was a spasmodic chat, which began with a discussion
on art, went on to financial and economic questions, alluded, somewhat
disapprovingly, to a High Court official, and did not leave even the
most exalted personages out of account. It began with the two men
standing, with their hats in their hands behind their backs, in front of
one of the pictures in the larger banqueting-hall, each of them thinking
more than he said. The Finance Minister said: "And this? What's this?
What's happening? Your Excellency is so well informed."

"Merely superficially. It is the investiture of two Grand princes of the
blood by their uncle, the Emperor. As your Excellency can see, the two
young men are kneeling and taking the oath with great solemnity on the
Emperor's sword."

"Fine, extraordinarily fine! What colouring! Dazzling. What lovely
golden hair the princes have! And the Emperor ... exactly as he is
described in the books! Yes, that Lindemann well deserves all the
distinctions which have been given him."

"Absolutely. Those which have been given him; those he quite deserves."

Dr. von Schröder, a tall man with a white beard, a pair of thin gold
spectacles on his white nose, a belly protruding slightly underneath his
stomach, and a bull-neck, which lapped over the stiff collar of his
coat, looked, without taking his eyes off the picture, somewhat
doubtfully at it, under the influence of a diffidence which seized him
from time to time during conversations with the baron. This
Knobelsdorff, this favourite and exalted functionary, was so
enigmatical. At times his remarks, his retorts, had an indefinable tinge
of irony about them. He was a widely travelled man, he had been all over
the world, he had so much general knowledge, and interests of such a
strange and exotic kind. And yet he was a model of correctness. Herr von
Schröder could not quite understand him. However much one agreed with
him, it was impossible to feel that one really understood him. His
opinions were full of a mysterious reserve, his judgments of a tolerance
which left one wondering whether they implied approval or contempt.

But the most suspicious thing about him was his laugh, a laugh of the
eyes in which the mouth took no part, a laugh which seemed to be
produced by the wrinkles radiating from the corners of his eyes, or vice
versa to have produced those same wrinkles in the course of years. Baron
Knobelsdorff was younger than the Finance Minister; he was then in the
prime of life, although his close-trimmed moustache and hair smoothly
parted in the middle were already beginning to turn grey--for the rest a
squat, short-necked man, obviously pinched by the collar of his
heavily-laced court dress. He left Herr von Schröder to his perplexity
for a minute, and then went on: "Only perhaps it might be to the
interests of a prudent administration of the Privy Purse if the
distinguished professor had rested content with stars and titles ... to
speak bluntly, what may all these delightful works of art have cost?"

Herr von Schröder recovered his animation. The desire, the hope of
understanding the Baron, of getting on to intimate and confidential
terms with him, excited him. "Just what I was thinking!" said he,
turning round to resume his walk through the galleries. "Your Excellency
has taken the question out of my mouth. I wonder what this 'Investiture'
cost, and all the rest of these wall-pictures. For the restoration of
the castle six years ago cost a million altogether."

"At least that."

"A solid million! And that amount was audited and approved by Lord
Marshal von Bühl zu Bühl, who is sitting yonder in a state of
comfortable catalepsy--audited, approved, and disbursed by the Keeper of
the Privy Purse, Count Trümmerhauff."

"Disbursed, or owing!"

"One of the two!... This total, I say, debited to a fund, a fund ..."

"In a word, the fund of the Grand Ducal settled estates."

"Your Excellency knows as well as I what that means. No, it makes me run
cold.... I swear I am neither a skin-flint nor a hypochondriac, but it
makes me run cold when I think of a man, with present conditions staring
him in the face, coolly throwing a million away--on what? On a nothing,
a pretty whim, on the beautification of the family schloss in which his
babies have to be born...."

Herr von Knobelsdorff laughed. "Yes, Heaven knows romance is a luxury,
and a mighty expensive one too! Excellency, I agree with you--of course.
But consider, after all the whole trouble in the Grand Ducal finances is
due to this same romantic luxury. The root of the evil lies in the fact
that the ruling dynasty are farmers; their capital consists in land and
soil, their income in agricultural profits. At the present day.... They
have not been able up to the present to make up their minds to turn into
industrialists and financiers. They allow themselves with regrettable
obstinacy to be swayed by certain obsolete and idealistic conceptions,
such as, for instance, the conceptions of trust and dignity. The royal
property is hampered by a trust entailed in fact. Advantageous
alienations are barred. Mortgages, the raising of capital on credit for
commercial improvements, seem to them improper. The administration is
seriously hindered in the free exploitation of business
opportunities--by ideas of dignity. You'll forgive me, won't you? I'm
telling you the absolute truth. People who pay so much attention to
propriety as these of course cannot and will not keep pace with the
freer and less hampered initiative of less obstinate and unpractical
business people. Now then, what, in comparison with this negative
luxury, does the positive million signify, which has been sacrificed to
a pretty whim, to borrow your Excellency's expression? If it only
stopped there! But we have the regular expenses of a fairly dignified
Court to meet. There are the schlosses and their parks to keep up,
Hollerbrunn, Monbrillant, Jägerpreis, aren't there? The Hermitage,
Delphinenort, the Pheasantry, and the others.... I had forgotten Schloss
Zegenhaus and the Haderstein ruins ... not to mention the Old
Schloss.... They are not well kept up, but they all cost money.... There
are the Court Theatre, the Picture Gallery, the Library, to maintain.
There are a hundred pensions to pay,--no legal compulsion to pay them,
but motives of trust and dignity. And look at the princely way in which
the Grand Duke behaved at the time of the last floods.... But I'm
preaching you a regular sermon!"

"A sermon," said the Minister of Finance, "which your Excellency thought
would shock me, while you really only confirmed my own view. Dear
Baron"--here Herr von Schröder laid his hand on his heart,--"I am
convinced that there is no longer room for any misunderstanding as to my
opinion, my loyal opinion, between you and me. The King can do no
wrong.... The sovereign is beyond the reach of reproaches. But here we
have to do with a default ... in both senses of the word!... a default
which I have no hesitation in laying at the door of Count Trümmerhauff.
His predecessors may be pardoned for having concealed from their
sovereigns the true state of the Court finances; in those days nothing
else was expected of them. But Count Trümmerhauff's attitude now is not
pardonable. In his position as Keeper of the Privy Purse he ought to
have felt it incumbent on him to put a brake on his Highness's
thoughtlessness, to feel it incumbent on him now to open his Royal
Highness's eyes relentlessly to the facts ..."

Herr Knobelsdorff knitted his brows and laughed.

"Really?" said he. "So your Excellency is of the opinion that that is
what the Count was appointed for! I can picture to myself the
justifiable astonishment of his lordship, if you lay before him your
view of the position. No, no ... your Excellency need be under no
delusion; that appointment was a quite deliberate expression of his
wishes on the part of his Royal Highness, which the Count must be the
first to respect. It expressed not only an 'I don't know,' but also an
'I won't know.' A man may be an exclusively decorative personality and
yet be acute enough to grasp this.... Besides ... honestly ... we've all
of us grasped it. And the only grain of comfort for all of us is this:
that there isn't a prince alive to whom it would be more fatal to
mention his debts than to his Royal Highness. Our Prince has a something
about him which would stop any tactless remarks of that sort before they
were spoken ..."

"Quite true, quite true," said Herr von Schröder. He sighed and stroked
thoughtfully the swansdown trimming of his hat. The two men were
sitting, half turned towards each other, on a raised window seat in a
roomy niche, past which a narrow stone corridor ran outside, a kind of
gallery, through the pointed arches of which peeps of the town could be
seen. Herr von Schröder went on:

"You answer me, Baron; one would think you were contradicting me, and
yet your words show more incredulity and bitterness than my own."

Herr von Knobelsdorff said nothing, but made a vague gesture of assent.

"It may be so," said the Finance Minister, and nodded gloomily at his
hat. "Your Excellency may be quite right. Perhaps we are all
blameworthy, we and our forefathers too. But it ought to have been
stopped. For consider, Baron; ten years ago an opportunity offered
itself of putting the finances of the Court on a sound footing, on a
better footing anyhow, if you like. It was lost. We understand each
other. The Grand Duke, attractive man that he is, had it then in his
power to clear things up by a marriage which from a sound point of view
might have been called dazzling. Instead of that ... speaking not for
myself, of course, but I shall never forget the disgust on everybody's
faces when they mentioned the amount of the dowry..."

"The Grand Duchess," said Herr von Knobelsdorff, and the wrinkles at the
corners of his eyes disappeared almost entirely, "is one of the
handsomest women I have ever seen."

"That is an answer one would expect of your Excellency. It's an æsthetic
answer, an answer which would have held quite as good if his Royal
Highness's choice, like his brother Lambert's, had fallen on a member of
the royal ballet."

"Oh, there was no danger of that. The Prince's taste is a fastidious
one, as he has shown. He has always shown in his wants the antithesis to
that want of taste which Prince Lambert has shown all his life. It was a
long time before he made up his mind to marry. Everybody had given up
all hope of a direct heir to the throne. They were resigned for better
or worse to Prince Lambert, whose ... unsuitability to be heir to the
throne we need not discuss. Then, a few weeks after he had succeeded,
Johann Albrecht met Princess Dorothea, cried, "This one or none!" and
the Grand Duchy had its sovereign lady. Your Excellency mentioned the
thoughtful looks which were exchanged when the figures of the dowry were
published,--you did not mention the jubilation which at the same time
prevailed. A poor princess, to be sure. But is beauty, such beauty, a
power of happiness or not? Never shall I forget her entry! Her first
smile, as it lighted on the gazing crowds, won their love. Your
Excellency must allow me to profess once more my belief in the idealism
of the people. The people want to see their best, their highest, their
dream, what stands for their soul, represented in their princes--not
their money bags. There are others to represent those...."

"That's just what there are not; just what we have not got."

"The more's the pity, then. The main point is, Dorothea has presented us
with an Heir Apparent."

"To whom may Heaven grant some idea of figures!"

"I agree."

At this point the conversation between the two Ministers ceased. It was
broken off by the announcement by aide-de-camp von Lichterloh, of the
happy issue of the confinement. The smaller banqueting-hall was soon
filled with officials. One of the great carved doors was quickly thrown
open, and the aide-de-camp appeared in the hall. He had a red face, blue
soldier's eyes, a bristling flaxen moustache, and silver lace on his
collar. He looked somewhat excited, like a man who had been released
from deadly boredom and was primed with good news. Conscious of the
unusualness of the occasion, he boldly ignored the rules of decorum and
etiquette. He saluted the company gaily, and, spreading his elbows,
raised the hilt of his sword almost to his breast crying: "Beg leave to
announce: a prince!"

"Good!" said Adjutant-General Count Schmettern.

"Delightful, quite delightful, I call that perfectly delightful!" said
Lord Marshal von Bühl zu Bühl in his jerky way; he had recovered
consciousness at once.

The President of the High Consistory, Dom Wislezenus--a clean-shaven,
well-built man, who, as a son of a general, and thanks to his personal
distinction, had attained to his high dignity at a comparatively early
age, and on whose black silk gown hung the star of an Order--folded his
white hands on his breast, and said in a melodious voice, "God bless his
Grand Ducal Highness!"

"You forget, Captain," said Herr von Knobelsdorff, laughing, "that in
making your announcement you are encroaching on my privileges and
province. Until I have made the most searching investigations into the
state of affairs, the question whether it is a prince or a princess
remains undecided."

The others laughed, and Herr von Lichterloh replied: "As you wish, your
Excellency! Then I have the honour to beg your Excellency to assume this
most important charge...."

This dialogue referred to the attributes of the Minister of State, as
registrar of the Grand Ducal house, in which capacity he was required to
satisfy himself with his own eyes of the sex of the princely offspring
and to make an official declaration on the subject. Herr von
Knobelsdorff complied with this formality in the so-called powder-closet
in which the new-born babe was bathed. He stayed longer there, however,
than he had intended to, as he was puzzled and arrested by a painful
sight, which at first he mentioned to nobody except the midwife.

Doctor Gnadebusch showed him the child, and her eyes, gleaming
mysteriously behind her thick spectacles, travelled between the Minister
of State and the little copper-coloured creature, as it groped about
with one--only one--little hand, as if she was saying: "Is it all
right?"

It was all right. Herr von Knobelsdorff was satisfied, and the wise
woman wrapped the child up again. But even then she continued to look
down at the Prince and then up at the Baron, until she had drawn his
eyes to the point to which she wished to attract them. The wrinkles at
the corners of his eyes disappeared, he knit his brows, tried, compared,
felt, examined for two or three minutes, and at last asked: "Has the
Grand Duke yet seen it?"

"No, Excellency."

"When the Grand Duke sees it," said Herr von Knobelsdorff, "tell him
that he will grow out of it."

And to the others on the ground-floor he reported--"A splendid prince!"

But ten or fifteen minutes after him the Grand Duke also made the
disagreeable discovery,--that was unavoidable, and resulted for
Surgeon-General Eschrich in a short, extremely unpleasant scene, but for
the Grimmburg Doctor Sammet in an interview with the Grand Duke which
raised him considerably in the latter's estimation and was useful to him
in his subsequent career. What happened was briefly as follows:

After the birth Johann Albrecht had again retired to the library, and
then returned to sit for some time at the bedside with his wife's hand
in his. Thereupon he went into the "powder-closet," where the infant now
lay in his high, richly gilded cradle, half covered with a blue silk
curtain, and sat down in an armchair by the side of his little son. But
while he sat and watched the sleeping infant it happened that he noticed
what it was hoped that he would not notice yet. He drew the counterpane
back, his face clouded over, and then he did exactly what Herr von
Knobelsdorff had done before him, looked from Doctor Gnadebusch to the
nurse and back again, both of whom said nothing, cast one glance at the
half-open door into the bride-chamber, and stalked excitedly back into
the library.

Here he at once rang the silver eagle-topped bell which stood on the
writing-table, and said to Herr von Lichterloh, who came in, very curtly
and coldly: "I require Herr Eschrich."

When the Grand Duke was angry with any member of his suite, he was wont
to strip the culprit for the moment of all his titles and dignities, and
to leave him nothing but his bare name.

The aide-de-camp again clapped his spurs and heels together and
withdrew. Johann Albrecht strode once or twice in a rage up and down the
room, and then, hearing Herr von Lichterloh bring the person he had
summoned into the ante-room, adopted an audience attitude at his
writing-table.

As he stood there, his head turned imperiously in half-profile, his left
hand planted on his hip, drawing back his satin-fronted frock coat from
his white waistcoat, he exactly resembled his portrait by Professor von
Lindemann, which hung beside the big looking-glass over the mantelpiece
in the "Hall of the Twelve Months" in the Town Schloss, opposite the
portrait of Dorothea, and of which countless engravings, photographs,
and picture postcards had been published. The only difference was that
Johann Albrecht in the portrait seemed to be of heroic stature, while he
really was scarcely of medium height. His forehead was high where his
hair had receded, and from under his grey eyebrows, his blue eyes looked
out, with dark rings round them, giving them an expression of tired
haughtiness. He had the broad, rather too high cheek-bones which were a
characteristic of his people. His whiskers and the soft tuft on his chin
were grey, his moustache almost white. From the distended nostrils of
his small but well-arched nose, two unusually deep furrows ran down to
his chin. The lemon-coloured ribbon of the Family Order always showed in
the opening of his waistcoat. In his buttonhole the Grand Duke wore a
carnation.

Surgeon-General Eschrich entered with a low bow. He had taken off his
operating-coat. His eyelid drooped more heavily than usual over his eye.
He looked apprehensive and uncomfortable.

The Grand Duke, his left hand on his hip, threw his head back, stretched
out his right hand and waved it, palm upwards, several times up and down
impatiently.

"I am awaiting an explanation, a justification, Surgeon-General," said
he, with a voice trembling with irritation. "You will have the goodness
to answer my questions. What is the matter with the child's arm?"

The Physician-in-Ordinary raised his hand a little--a feeble gesture of
impotence and blamelessness. He said:

"An it please Your Royal Highness.... An unfortunate occurrence.
Unfavourable circumstances during the pregnancy of her Royal
Highness...."

"That's all nonsense!" The Grand Duke was so much excited that he did
not wish for any justification, in fact he would not allow one. "I would
remind you, sir, that I am beside myself. Unfortunate occurrence! It was
your business to take precautions against unfortunate occurrences...."

The Surgeon-General stood with half-bowed head and, sinking his voice to
a submissive tone, addressed the ground at his feet.

"I humbly beg to be allowed to remind you that I, at least, am not alone
responsible. Privy Councillor Grasanger--an authority on
gynæcology--examined her Royal Highness. But nobody can be held
responsible in this case...."

"Nobody ... Really! I permit myself to make you responsible.... You are
answerable to me.... You were in charge during the pregnancy, you
superintended the confinement. I have relied on the knowledge to be
expected from your rank, Surgeon-General, I have trusted to your
experience. I am bitterly disappointed, bitterly disappointed. All that
your skill can boast of is ... that a crippled child has been born...."

"Would your Royal Highness graciously weigh ..."

"I have weighed. I have weighed and found wanting. Thank you!"

Surgeon-General Eschrich retired backwards, bowing. In the ante-room he
shrugged his shoulders, while his cheeks glowed.

The Grand Duke again fell to pacing the library in his princely wrath,
unreasonable, misinformed, and foolish in his loneliness. However,
whether it was that he wished to humiliate the Physician-in-Ordinary
still further, or that he regretted having robbed himself of any
explanations--ten minutes later the unexpected happened, and the Grand
Duke sent Herr von Lichterloh to summon young Doctor Sammet to the
library.

The doctor, when he received the message, again said: "Quite delighted
... quite delighted, ..." and at first changed colour a little, then
composed himself admirably. It is true that he was not a complete master
of the prescribed etiquette, and bowed too soon, while he was still in
the door, so that the aide-de-camp could not close it behind him, and
had to ask him in a whisper to move forward; but afterwards he stood in
an easy and unconstrained attitude, and gave reassuring answers,
although he showed that he was naturally rather slow of speech,
beginning his sentences with hesitating noises and frequently
interspersing them with a "Yes," as if to confirm what he was saying. He
wore his dark yellow hair cut _en brosse_ and his moustache untrimmed.
His chin and cheeks were clean-shaved, and rather sore from it. He
carried his head a little on one side, and the gaze of his grey eyes
told of shrewdness and practical goodness. His nose, which was too broad
at the bottom, pointed to his origin. He wore a black tie, and his shiny
boots were of a country cut. He kept his elbows close to his side, with
one hand on his silver watch-chain. His whole appearance suggested
candour and professional skill; it inspired confidence.

The Grand Duke addressed him unusually graciously, rather in the manner
of a teacher who has been scolding a naughty boy, and turns to another
with a sudden assumption of mildness.

"I have sent for you, doctor.... I want information from you about this
peculiarity in the body of the new-born prince.... I assume that it has
not escaped your notice.... I am confronted with a riddle ... an
extremely painful riddle.... In a word, I desire your opinion." And the
Grand Duke, changing his position, ended with a gracious motion of the
hand, which encouraged the doctor to speak.

Dr. Sammet looked at him silently and attentively, as if waiting till
the Grand Duke had completely regained his princely composure. Then he
said: "Yes; we have here to do with a case which is not of very common
occurrence, but which is well known and familiar to us. Yes. It is
actually a case of atrophy ..."

"Excuse me ... atrophy ...?"

"Forgive me, Royal Highness. I mean stunted growth. Yes."

"I see, stunted growth. Stunting. That's it. The left hand is stunted.
But it's unheard of! I cannot understand it! Such a thing has never
happened in my family! People talk nowadays about heredity."

Again the doctor looked silently and attentively at the lonely and
domineering man, to whom the news had only just penetrated that people
were talking lately about heredity. He answered simply: "Pardon me,
Royal Highness, but in this case there can be no question of heredity."

"Really! You're quite sure!" said the Grand Duke rather mockingly. "That
is one satisfaction. But will you be so kind as to tell me what there
can be a question of, then."

"With pleasure, Royal Highness. The cause of the malformation is
entirely a mechanical one. It has been caused through a mechanical
constriction during the development of the embryo. We call such
malformations constriction-formations, yes."

The Grand Duke listened with anxious disgust; he obviously feared the
effect of each succeeding word on his sensitiveness. He kept his brows
knit and his mouth open: the two furrows running down to his beard
seemed deeper than ever. He said: "Constriction-formations, ... but how
in the world ... I am quite sure every precaution must have been
taken ..."

"Constriction-formations," answered Dr. Sammet, "can occur in various
ways. But we can say with comparative certainty that in our case ... in
this case it is the amnion which is to blame."

"I beg your pardon.... The amnion?"

"That is one of the foetal membranes, Royal Highness. Yes. And in
certain circumstances the removal of this membrane from the embryo may
be retarded and proceed so slowly that threads and cords are left
stretching from one to the other ... amniotic threads as we call them,
yes. These threads may be dangerous, for they can bind and knot
themselves round the whole of a child's limb; they can entirely
intercept, for instance, the life-ducts of a hand and even amputate it.
Yes."

"Great heavens ... amputate it. So we must be thankful that it has not
come to an amputation of the hand?"

"That might have happened. Yes. But all that has happened is an
unfastening, resulting in an atrophy."

"And that could not be discovered, foreseen, prevented?"

"No, Royal Highness. Absolutely not. It is quite certain that no blame
whatever attaches to anybody. Such constrictions do their work in
secret. We are powerless against them. Yes."

"And the malformation is incurable? The hand will remain stunted?"

Dr. Sammet hesitated; he looked kindly at the Grand Duke.

"It will never be quite normal, certainly not," he said cautiously. "But
the stunted hand will grow a little larger than it is at present, oh
yes, it assuredly will ..."

"Will he be able to use it? For instance ... to hold his reins or to
make gestures, like any one else?..."

"Use it ... a little.... Perhaps not much. And he's got his right hand,
that's all right."

"Will it be very obvious?" asked the Grand Duke, and scanned Dr.
Sammet's face earnestly. "Very noticeable? Will it detract much from his
general appearance, think you?"

"Many people," answered Dr. Sammet evasively, "live and work under
greater disadvantages. Yes."

The Grand Duke turned away, and walked once up and down the room. Dr.
Sammet deferentially made way for him, and withdrew towards the door. At
last the Grand Duke resumed his position at the writing-table and said:
"I have now heard what I wanted to know, doctor; I thank you for your
report. You understand your business, no doubt about that. Why do you
live in Grimmburg? Why do you not practise in the capital?"

"I am still young, Royal Highness, and before I devote myself to
practising as a specialist in the capital I should like a few years of
really varied practice, of general experience and research. A country
town like Grimmburg affords the best opportunity of that. Yes."

"Very sound, very admirable of you. In what do you propose to specialise
later on?"

"In the diseases of children, Royal Highness. I intend to be a
children's doctor, yes."

"You are a Jew?" asked the Grand Duke, throwing back his head and
screwing up his eyes.

"Yes, Royal Highness."

"Ah--will you answer me one more question? Have you ever found your
origin to stand in your way, a drawback in your professional career? I
ask as a ruler, who is especially concerned that the principle of 'equal
chances for all' shall hold good unconditionally and privately, not only
officially."

"Everybody in the Grand Duchy," answered Dr. Sammet, "has the right to
work." But he did not stop there: moving his elbows like a pair of short
wings, in an awkward, impassioned way, he made a few hesitating noises,
and then added in a restrained but eager voice: "No principle of
equalization, if I may be allowed to remark, will ever prevent the
incidence in the life of the community of exceptional and abnormal men
who are distinguished from the bourgeois by their nobleness or infamy.
It is the duty of the individual not to concern himself as to the
precise nature of the distinction between him and the common herd, but
to see what is the essential in that distinction and to recognize that
it imposes on him an exceptional obligation towards society. A man is at
an advantage, not at a disadvantage, compared with the regular and
therefore complacent majority, if he has one motive more than they to
extraordinary exertions. Yes, yes," repeated Dr. Sammet. The double
affirmative was meant to confirm his answer.

"Good ... not bad; very remarkable, anyhow," said the Grand Duke
judicially. He found Dr. Sammet's words suggestive, though somewhat off
the point. He dismissed the young man with the words: "Well, doctor, my
time is limited. I thank you. This interview--apart from its painful
occasion--has much reassured me. I have the pleasure of bestowing on you
the Albrecht Cross of the Third Class with Crown. I shall remember you.
Thank you."

This was what passed between the Grimmburg doctor and the Grand Duke.
Shortly after Johann Albrecht left the castle and returned by special
train to the capital, chiefly to show himself to the rejoicing populace,
but also in order to give several audiences in the palace. It was
arranged that he should return in the evening to the castle, and take up
his residence there for the next few weeks.

All those present at the confinement at Grimmburg who did not belong to
the Grand Duchess's suite were also accommodated in the special train of
the bankrupt local railway, some of them travelling in the Sovereign's
own saloon. But the Grand Duke drove from the castle to the station
alone with von Knobelsdorff, the Minister of State, in an open landau,
one of the brown Court carriages with the little golden crown on the
door. The white feathers in the hats of the chasseurs in front fluttered
in the summer breeze. Johann Albrecht was grave and silent on the
journey; he seemed to be worried and morose. And although Herr von
Knobelsdorff knew that the Grand Duke, even in private, disliked anybody
addressing him unasked and uninvited, yet at last he made up his mind to
break the silence.

"Your Royal Highness," he said deprecatingly, "seems to take so much to
heart the little anomaly which has been discovered in the Prince's body,
... and yet one would think that on a day like this the reasons for joy
and proud thankfulness so far outweigh ..."

"My dear Knobelsdorff," replied Johann Albrecht, with some irritation
and almost in tears, "you must forgive my ill-humour; you surely do not
wish me to be in good spirits. I can see no reason for being so. The
Grand Duchess is going on well--true enough, and the child is a
boy--that's a blessing too. But he has come into the world with an
atrophy, a constriction, caused by amniotic threads. Nobody is to blame,
it is a misfortune; but misfortunes for which nobody is to blame are the
most terrible of all misfortunes, and the sight of their Sovereign ought
to awaken in his people other feelings than those of sympathy. The Heir
Apparent is delicate, needs constant care. It was a miracle that he
survived that attack of pleurisy two years ago, and it will be nothing
less than a miracle if he lives to attain his majority. Now Heaven
grants me a second son--he seems strong, but he comes into the world
with only one hand. The other is stunted, useless, a deformity, he will
have to hide it. What a drawback! What an impediment! He will have to
brave it out before the world all his life. We must let it gradually
leak out, so that it may not cause too much of a shock on his first
appearance in public. No, I cannot yet get over it. A prince with one
hand ..."

"'With one hand,'" said Herr von Knobelsdorff. "Did your Royal Highness
use that expression twice deliberately?"

"Deliberately?"

"You did not, then?... For the Prince has two hands, yet as one is
stunted, one might if one liked also describe him as a prince with one
hand."

"What then?"

"And one must almost wish, not that your Royal Highness's second son,
but that the heir to the throne were the victim of this small
malformation."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why, your Royal Highness will laugh at me; but I am thinking of the
gipsy woman."

"The gipsy woman? Please go on, my dear Baron!"

"Of the gipsy woman--forgive me!--who a hundred years ago prophesied the
birth of a Prince to your Royal Highness's house--a prince 'with one
hand'--that is how tradition puts it--and attached to the birth of that
prince a certain promise, couched in peculiar terms."

The Grand Duke turned on his seat and stared, without saying a word, at
Herr von Knobelsdorff, at the outer corner of whose eyes the radiating
wrinkles were playing. Then, "Mighty entertaining!" he said, and resumed
his former attitude.

"Prophecies," continued Herr von Knobelsdorff, "generally come true to
this extent, that circumstances arise which one can interpret, if one
has a mind to, in their sense. And the broadness of the terms in which
every proper prophecy is couched makes this all the more easy. 'With one
hand'--that is regular oracle-style. What has actually happened is a
moderate case of atrophy. But that much counts for a good deal, for what
is there to prevent me, what is there to prevent the people, from
assuming the whole by this partial fulfilment, and declaring that the
conditional part of the prophecy has been fulfilled? The people will do
so; if not at once, at any rate if the rest of the prophecy, the actual
promise, is in any way realised, it will put two and two together, as it
always has done, in its wish to see what is written turn out true. I
don't see how it is going to come about--the Prince is a younger son, he
will not come to the throne, the intentions of fate are obscure. But the
one-handed prince is there--and so may he bestow on us as much as he
can."

The Grand Duke did not answer, secretly thrilled by dreams of the future
of his dynasty.

"Well, Knobelsdorff, I will not be angry with you. You want to comfort
me, and you have not done it badly. But I must do what is expected of
me...."

The air resounded with the distant cheers of many voices. The people of
Grimmburg were crowded in black masses behind the cordon at the station.
Officials were standing apart in front, waiting for the carriages. There
was the mayor, raising his top-hat, wiping his forehead with a crumpled
handkerchief, and poring over a paper whose contents he was committing
to memory. Johann Albrecht assumed the expression appropriate to
listening to the smoothly worded address and to answering concisely and
graciously:

"Most excellent Mr. Mayor...." The town was dressed with flags, and the
bells were ringing.

In the capital all the bells were ringing. And in the evening there were
illuminations; not by formal request of the authorities, but
spontaneous--the whole city was a blaze of light.




II

THE COUNTRY


The country measured eight thousand square kilometres, and numbered one
million inhabitants.

A pretty, quiet, leisurely country. The tops of the trees in its forests
rustled dreamily; its broad acres showed signs of honest care; its
industries were undeveloped to the point of indigence.

It possessed some brick-kilns, a few salt and silver-mines--that was
almost all. A certain amount of tourist-traffic must also be mentioned,
but he would be a bold man who described it as a flourishing industry.
The alkali springs, which rose from the ground in the immediate
neighbourhood of the capital and formed the centre of an attractive
bathing-establishment, constituted the claims of the city to be
considered a health resort. But while the baths at the end of the Middle
Ages had been frequented by visitors from afar, they had later lost
their repute, and been put in the shade by other baths and forgotten.
The most valuable of the springs, that called the Ditlinde spring, which
was exceptionally rich in lithium salts, had been opened up quite
recently, in the reign of Johann Albrecht III, and as energetic business
and advertising methods were not employed, its water had not yet
succeeded in winning world-recognition. A hundred thousand bottles of it
were sent away in the year--rather less than more. And but few strangers
came to drink it on the spot....

The Diet was the scene all the year round of speeches about the "barely"
satisfactory results of the trade returns, by which was really meant the
entirely unsatisfactory results, which nobody could dispute, that the
local railways did not cover their expenses and the main lines did not
pay any dividends--distressing but unalterable and inveterate facts,
which the Minister for Trade in luminous but monotonous declarations
explained by the peaceful commercial and industrial circumstances of the
country, as well as by the inaccessibility of the home coal-deposits.
Critics added something about defective organization of the State
industrial administration. But the spirit of contradiction and negation
was not strong in the Diet; the prevailing frame of mind among the
representatives of the people was one of dull and true-hearted loyalty.

So the railway revenues did not by any means rank first among the public
revenues of a private-investment nature; the forest revenues had ranked
first for years in this land of woods and plough. The fall in them,
their startling depreciation, however sufficient reasons there were for
it, was a much more difficult matter to mend.

The people loved their woods. They were a fair and compact type, with
searching blue eyes and broad, rather high cheek-bones, a sensible and
honest, solid and backward stamp of men. They clung to their country's
forest with all the strength of their nature; it lived in their bones,
it was to the artists which it bred the source and home of their
inspirations, and it was quite properly the object of popular gratitude,
not only in regard to the gifts of soul and intellect of which it was
the donor. The poor gathered their firewood in the forest; it gave to
them freely, they had it for nothing. They went stooping and gathering
all kinds of berries and mushrooms among its trunks, and earned a little
something by doing so. That was not all. The people recognized that
their forest had a very distinctly favourable influence on the weather
and the healthy condition of the country; they were well aware that
without the lovely woods in the neighbourhood of the capital the
spa-garden outside would not attract foreigners with money to spend; in
short, this not over-industrious and up-to-date people could not help
knowing that the forest stood for the most important asset, the most
profitable heritage of the country.

And yet the forest had been sinned against, outraged for ages and ages.
The Grand Ducal Department of Woods and Forests deserved all the
reproaches that were laid against it. That Department had not political
insight enough to see that the wood must be maintained and kept as
inalienable common property, if it was to be useful not only to the
present generation, but also to those to come; and that it would surely
avenge itself if it were exploited recklessly and short-sightedly,
without regard to the future, for the benefit of the present.

That was what happened, and was still happening. In the first place
great stretches of the floor of the forest had been impoverished by
reckless and excessive spoliation of its litter. Matters had repeatedly
gone so far that not only the most recent carpet of needles and leaves,
but the greatest part of the fall of years past had been removed and
used in the fields partly as litter, partly as mould. There were many
forests which had been completely stripped of mould; some had been
crippled by the raking away of the litter: instances of this were to be
found in the public woodlands as well as in the State woodlands.

If the woods had been put to these uses in order to tide over a sudden
agricultural crisis, there would have been no reason to complain. But
although there were not wanting those who declared that an agricultural
system founded on the appropriation of wood-litter was inexpedient,
indeed dangerous, the trade in litter went on without any particular
reason, on purely fiscal grounds, so it was put--that is to say, on
grounds which, examined closely, proved to be only one ground and
object, namely, the making of money. For it was money which was wanted.
But to get this money, ceaseless inroads were made on the capital, until
one fine day it was realised with dismay that an unsuspected
depreciation in that capital had ensued.

The people were a peasant race, and thought that the way to be
up-to-date was to display a perverted, artificial, and improper zeal and
to employ reckless business methods. A characteristic instance was the
dairy-farming ... one word about that. Loud complaints were heard,
principally in the official medical annual, that a deterioration was
noticeable in the nourishment, and consequently in the development, of
the country people. What was the reason? The owners of cows were bent on
turning all the full-milk at their disposal into money. The spread of
the dairy industry, the development and productiveness of the milk
trade, tempted them to disregard the claims of their own establishments.
A strength-giving milk diet became a rarity in the country, and in its
stead recourse was had to unsubstantial skimmed milk, inferior
substitutes, vegetable oils, and, unfortunately, alcoholic drinks as
well. The critics talked about under-feeding, they even called it
physical and moral debilitation of the population; they brought the
facts to the notice of the Diet, and the Government promised to give the
matter their earnest attention.

But it was only too clear that the Government was at bottom infected
with the same perversity as the mistaken dairy-farmers. Timber continued
to be cut to excess in the State forests; once cut it was gone, and
meant a continual shrinkage of public property. The clearings might have
been necessary occasionally, when the forests had been damaged in one
way or another, but often enough they had been due simply to the fiscal
reasons referred to: and instead of the proceeds of the clearings being
used for the purchase of new tracts, instead of the cleared tracts being
replanted as quickly as possible--instead, in a word, of the damage to
the capital value of the State forests being balanced by an addition to
their capital value, the quickly earned profits had been devoted to the
payment of current expenses and the redemption of bonds. Of course there
could be no doubt that a reduction of the National Debt was only too
desirable; but the critics expressed the opinion that that was not the
time to devote extraordinary revenues to the building up of the
sinking-fund.

Anybody who had no interest in mincing matters must have described the
State finances as in a hopeless muddle. The country carried a debt of
thirty million pounds--it struggled along under it with patience and
devotion, but with secret groans. For the burden, much too heavy in
itself, was made trebly heavy through a rise in the rate of interest and
through conditions of repayment such as are usually imposed on a country
whose credit is shaken, whose exchange is low, and which has already
almost come to be reckoned as "interesting" in the world of financiers.

The succession of financial crises appeared to be never-ending. The list
of failures seemed without beginning or end. And a maladministration,
which was made no better by frequent changes in its personnel, regarded
borrowing as the only cure for the creeping sickness in the State
finances. Even the Chancellor of the Exchequer, von Schröder, whose
probity and singleness of purpose were beyond all doubt, had been given
a peerage by the Grand Duke, because he had succeeded in placing a loan
at a high rate of interest in the most difficult circumstances. His
heart was set on an improvement in the credit of the State: but as his
resource was to contract new debts while he paid off the old, his policy
proved to be no better than a well-meant but costly blind. For a
simultaneous sale and purchase of bonds meant a higher purchase than
selling price, involving the loss of thousands of pounds.

It seemed as if the country were incapable of producing a man of any
adequate financial gifts. Improper practices and a policy of
"hushing-up" were the fashion. The budget was so drawn up that it was
impossible to distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary State
requirements. Ordinary and extraordinary items were jumbled up together,
and those responsible for the budgets deceived themselves, and everybody
else, as to the real state of affairs, by appropriating loans, which
were supposed to be raised for extraordinary purposes, to cover a
deficit in the ordinary exchequer.... The holder of the finance
portfolio at one time was actually an ex-court marshal.

Dr. Krippenreuther, who took the helm towards the end of Johann
Albrecht III's reign, was the Minister who, convinced like Herr von
Schröder of the necessity for a strenuous reduction in the debt, induced
the Diet to consent to a final and extreme addition to the burden of
taxation. But the country, naturally poor as it was, was on the verge of
insolvency, and all Krippenreuther got was unpopularity. His policy
really meant merely a transfer from one hand to the other, a transfer
which itself involved a loss; for the increase in taxation laid a burden
on the national economy which pressed more heavily and more directly
than that which was removed by the sinking of the National Debt.

Where, then, were help and a remedy to be found? A miracle, so it
seemed, was needed--and meanwhile the sternest economy. The people were
pious and loyal, they loved their princes as themselves, they were
permeated with the sublimity of the monarchical idea, they saw in it a
reflexion of the Deity. But the economical pressure was too painful, too
generally felt. The most ignorant could read in the thinned and crippled
forests a tale of woe. The consequence was that repeated appeals had
been made in the Diet for a curtailment of the Civil List, a cutting
down of the appanages and Crown endowments.

The Civil List amounted to twenty-five thousand pounds, the revenues of
the Crown demesnes to thirty-seven thousand pounds. That was all. And
the Crown was in debt--to what extent was perhaps known to Count
Trümmerhauff, the Keeper of the Grand Ducal Purse, a regular stickler,
but a man of absolutely no business instincts. It was not known to
Johann Albrecht; at any rate he seemed not to know it, and therein
followed the example of his forefathers, who had rarely deigned to give
more than a passing thought to their debts.

The people's attitude of veneration was reflected in their princes'
extraordinary sense of their own dignity, which had sometimes assumed
fanciful and even extravagant forms, and had found its most obvious and
most serious expression in every period in a tendency to extravagance
and to a reckless ostentation as exaggerated as the dignity it
represented. One Grimmburger had been christened "the luxurious" in so
many words,--they had almost all deserved the nickname. So that the
state of indebtedness of the House was an historical and hereditary
state, reaching back to the times when all loans were a private concern
of the Sovereign, and when John the Headstrong, wishing to raise a loan,
pledged the liberty of the most prominent of his subjects to do so.

Those times were past; and Johann Albrecht III, a true-born Grimmburger
in his instincts, was unfortunately no longer in a position to give free
rein to his instincts. His fathers had played ducks and drakes with the
family funds, which were reduced to nothing or little better than
nothing. They had been spent on the building of country-seats with
French names and marble colonnades, on parks with fountains, on splendid
operas and all kinds of glittering shows. Figures were figures, and,
much against the inclination of the Grand Duke, in fact without his
consent, the Court was gradually cut down.

The Princess Catherine, the sister of the Grand Duke, was never spoken
of in the capital without a touch of sympathy. She had been married to a
member of a neighbouring ruling House, had been left a widow, and had
come back to her brother's capital, where she lived with her red-headed
children in what used to be the Heir Apparent's palace on the
Albrechtstrasse, before whose gates a gigantic doorkeeper stood all day
long in a pompous attitude with staff and shoulder-belt complete, while
life went on with peculiar moderation inside.

Prince Lambert, the Grand Duke's brother, did not come in for much
attention. There was a coolness between him and his relations, who could
not forgive him his _mésalliance_, and he hardly ever came to Court. He
lived in his villa overlooking the public gardens with his wife, an
ex-dancer from the Court Theatre who bore the title of Baroness von
Rohrdorf, after one of the Prince's properties; and there he divided his
time between sport and theatre-going, and struggling with his debts. He
had dropped his dignities and lived just like a private citizen; and if
he was generally supposed to have a struggle to make two ends meet,
nobody gave him much sympathy for it.

But alterations had been made in the old castle itself--reductions of
expenses, which were discussed in the city and the country, and
discussed usually in an apprehensive and regretful sense, because the
people at bottom wished to see themselves represented with due pride and
magnificence. Several high posts at the Court had been amalgamated for
economy's sake, and for years past Herr von Bühl zu Bühl had been Lord
Marshal, Chief Master of the Ceremonies, and Marshal of the Household at
once. There had been many discharges in the Board of Green Cloth and the
servants' hall, among the pike-staffs, yeomen of the guard, and grooms,
the master cooks and chief confectioners, the court and chamber lackeys.
The establishment of the royal stable had been reduced to the barest
minimum.... And what was the good of it all? The Grand Duke's contempt
for money showed itself in sudden outbursts against the squeeze; and
while the catering at the Court functions reached the extreme limits of
permissible simplicity, while at the supper at the close of the Thursday
concerts in the Marble Hall nothing but continual roast beef with sauce
remoulade and ice-pudding were served on the red velvet coverings of the
gilt-legged tables, while the daily fare at the Grand Duke's own
candle-decked table was no better than that of an ordinary middle-class
family, he defiantly threw away a whole year's income on the repair of
the Grimmburg.

But meanwhile the rest of his seats were falling to pieces. Herr von
Bühl simply had not the means at his disposal for their upkeep. And yet
it was a pity in the case of many of them. Those which lay at some
little distance from the capital, or right out in the country, those
luxurious asylums cradled in natural beauties whose dainty names spoke
of rest, solitude, content, pastime, and freedom from care, or recalled
a flower or a jewel, served as holiday resorts for the citizens and
strangers, and brought in a certain amount in entrance-money which
sometimes--not always--was devoted to their upkeep. This was not the
case, however, with those in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital.
There was the little schloss in the Empire style, the Hermitage,
standing silent and graceful on the edge of the northern suburbs, but
long uninhabited and deserted in the middle of its over-grown park,
which joined on to the public gardens, and looked out on its little,
mud-stiff pond. There was Schloss Delphinenort which, only a quarter of
an hour's walk from the other, in the northern part of the public
gardens themselves, all of which had once belonged to the Crown,
mirrored its untidiness in a huge square fountain-basin; both were in a
sad state. That Delphinenort in particular--that noble structure in the
early baroque style, with its stately entrance-colonnade, its high
windows divided into little white-framed panes, its carved festoons, its
Roman busts in the niches, its splendid approach-stairs, its general
magnificence--should be abandoned to decay for ever, as it seemed, was
the sorrow of all lovers of architectural beauty; and when one day, as
the result of unforeseen, really strange circumstances, it was restored
to honour and youth, among them at any rate the satisfaction was
general.... For the rest, Delphinenort could be reached in fifteen or
twenty minutes from the spa-garden, which lay a little to the north-west
of the city, and was connected with its centre by a direct line of
trams.

The only residences used by the Grand Ducal family were Schloss
Hollerbrunn, the summer residence, an expanse of white buildings with
Chinese roofs, on the farther side of the chain of hills which
surrounded the capital, coolly and pleasantly situated on the river and
famed for the elder-hedges in its park; farther, Schloss Jägerpreis, the
ivy-covered hunting-box in the middle of the woods to westward; and
lastly, the Town Castle itself, called the "Old" Castle, although no new
one existed.

It was called thus, with no idea of comparison, simply because of its
age, and the critics declared that its redecoration was more a matter of
urgency than that of the Grimmburg. Even the inner rooms, which were in
daily use by the family, were faded and cracked, not to mention the many
uninhabited and unused rooms in the oldest parts of the many-styled
building, which were all choked and flyblown. For some time past the
public had been refused admission to them,--a measure which was
obviously due to the shocking state of the castle. But people who could
get a peep, the tradesmen and the staff, declared that there was
stuffing peeping out of more than one stiff, imposing piece of
furniture.

The castle and the Court Church together made up a grey, irregular, and
commanding mass of turrets, galleries, and gateways, half fortress, half
palace. Various epochs had contributed to its erection, and large parts
of it were decaying, weather-beaten, spoilt, and ready to fall into
pieces. To the west it dropped steeply down to the lower-lying city, and
was connected with it by battered steps clamped together with rusty iron
bars. But the huge main gate, guarded by lions couchant, and surmounted
by the pious, haughty motto: "Turris fortissima nomen Domini," in almost
illegible carving, faced the Albrechtsplatz. It had its sentries and
sentry boxes; it was the scene of the changing of the guard, with drums
and martial display; it was the playground of all the urchins of the
town.

The Old Castle had three courtyards, in the corners of which rose
graceful stair-turrets and between whose paving stones an unnecessary
amount of weeds was generally growing. But in the middle of one of the
courtyards stood the rose-bush,--it had stood there for ages in a bed,
although there was no other attempt at a garden to be seen. It was just
like any other rose-bush; it had a porter to tend it, it stood there in
snow, rain, and sunshine, and in due season it bore roses. These were
exceptionally fine roses, nobly formed, with dark-red velvet petals, a
pleasure to look at, and real masterpieces of nature. But those roses
had one strange and dreadful peculiarity: they had no scent! Or rather,
they had a scent, but for some unknown reason it was not the scent of
roses, but of decay--a slight, but plainly perceptible scent of decay.
Everybody knew it; it was in the guide-books, and strangers visited the
courtyard to convince themselves of it with their own noses. There was
also a popular idea that it was written somewhere that at some time or
other, on a day of rejoicings and public felicity, the blossoms of the
rose-bush would begin to give forth a natural and lovely odour.

After all, it was only to be expected that the popular imagination would
be exercised by the wonderful rose-bush. It was exercised in precisely
the same way by the "owl-chamber" in the Old Castle, which was used as a
lumber room. Its position was such that it could not be ignored, not far
from the "Gala Rooms," and the "Hall of the Knights," where the Court
officers used to assemble on Court days, and thus in a comparatively
modern part of the building. But there was certainly something uncanny
about it, especially as from time to time noises and cries occurred
there, which could not be heard outside the room and whose origin was
unascertainable. People swore that it came from ghosts, and many
asserted that it was especially noticeable when important and decisive
events in the Grand Ducal family were impending,--a more or less
gratuitous rumour, which deserved no more serious attention than other
national products of an historical and dynastic frame of mind, as for
instance a certain dark prophecy which had been handed down for hundreds
of years and may be mentioned in this connexion. It came from an old
gipsy-woman, and was to the effect that a prince "with one hand" would
bring the greatest good fortune to the country. The old hag had said:
"He will give to the country with one hand more than all the rest could
give it with two." That is how the prophecy was recorded, and how it was
quoted from time to time.

Round the Old Castle lay the capital, consisting of the Old Town and the
New Town, with their public buildings, monuments, fountains, and parks,
their streets and squares, named after princes, artists, deserving
statesmen, and distinguished citizens, divided into two very unequal
halves by the many-bridged river, which flowed in a great loop round the
southern end of the public garden, and was lost in the surrounding
hills. The city was a university town, it possessed an academy which was
not in much request and whose curricula were unpractical and rather
old-fashioned; the Professor of Mathematics, Privy Councillor
Klinghammer, was the only one of any particular repute in the scientific
world. The Court Theatre, though poorly endowed, maintained a decent
level of performances. There was a little musical, literary, and
artistic life; a certain number of foreigners came to the capital,
wishing to share in its well-regulated life and such intellectual
attractions as it offered, among them wealthy invalids who settled down
in the villas round the spa-gardens and were held in honour by the State
and the community as doughty payers of taxes.

And now you know what the town was like, what the country was like, and
how matters stood.




III

HINNERKE THE SHOEMAKER


The Grand Duke's second son made his first public appearance on the
occasion of his christening. This festivity aroused the same interest in
the country as always attached to happenings within the Royal Family
circle. It took place after weeks of discussion and research as to the
manner of its arrangement, was held in the Court Church by the President
of the High Consistory, Dom Wislezenus, with all the due ceremonial, and
in public, to the extent that the Lord Marshal's office, by the Prince's
orders, had issued invitations to it to every class of society.

Herr von Bühl zu Bühl, a courtly ritualist of the greatest
circumspection and accuracy, in his full-dress uniform superintended,
with the help of two masters of the ceremonies, the whole of the
intricate proceedings: the gathering of the princely guests in the Gala
Rooms, the solemn procession in which they, attended by pages and
squires, walked up the staircase of Heinrich the Luxurious and through a
covered passage into the church, the entry of the spectators from the
highest to the lowest, the distribution of the seats, the observance of
due decorum during the religious service itself, the order of precedence
at the congratulations which took place directly after the service was
ended.... He panted and puffed, smiled ingratiatingly, brandished his
staff, laughed in nervous bursts, and kept executing retreating bows.

The Court Church was decorated with plants and draperies. In addition to
the representatives of the nobility, of the Court and country, and of
the higher and lower Civil Service, tradesmen, country folk, and common
artisans, in high good humour, filled the seats. But in a half-circle of
red-velvet arm-chairs in front of the altar sat the relations of the
infant, foreign princes as sponsors and the trusty representatives of
such as had not come in person. The assemblage at the christening of the
Heir Apparent six years before had not been more distinguished. For in
view of Albrecht's delicacy, the advanced age of the Grand Duke, and the
dearth of Grimmburg relations, the person of the second-born prince was
at once recognized as an important guarantee for the future of the
dynasty. Little Albrecht took no part in the ceremony; he was kept to
his bed with an indisposition which Surgeon-General Eschrich declared to
be of a nervous character.

Dom Wislezenus preached from a text of the Grand Duke's own choosing.
The _Courier_, a gossiping city newspaper, had given a full account of
how the Grand Duke had one day fetched with his very own hands the large
metal-clasped family Bible out of the rarely visited library, had shut
himself up with it in his study, searched in it for a whole hour, at
last copied the text he had chosen on to a piece of paper with his
pocket-pencil, signed it "Johann Albrecht," and sent it to the Court
preacher. Dom Wislezenus treated it in a musical style, so as to speak,
like a _leit motif_. He turned it inside and out, dressed it in
different shapes and squeezed it dry; he announced it in a whisper, then
with the whole power of his lungs; and whereas, delivered lightly and
reflectively at the beginning of his discourse, it seemed a thin, almost
unsubstantial subject; at the close, when he for the last time thundered
it at the congregation, it appeared richly orchestrated, heavily scored,
and pregnant with emotion. Then he passed on to the actual baptism, and
carried it out at full length so that all could see it, with due stress
on every detail.

This, then, was the day of the prince's first public appearance, and
that he was the chief actor in the drama was clearly shown by the fact
that he was the last to come on the stage, and that his entry was
distinct from that of the rest of the company. Preceded by Herr von
Bühl, he entered slowly, in the arms of the Mistress of the Robes,
Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen, and all eyes were fixed on him. He was
asleep in his laces, his veils, and his white silk robe. One of his
little hands happened to be hidden. His appearance evoked unusual
delight and emotion. The cynosure and centre of attraction, he lay
quietly there, bearing it all, as may be supposed, patiently and
unassumingly. It was to his credit that he did not make any disturbance,
did not clutch or struggle; but, doubtless from innate trustfulness,
quietly resigned himself to the state which surrounded him, bore it
patiently, and even at that early date sank his own emotions in it....

The arms in which he reposed were frequently changed at fixed points in
the ceremony. Baroness Schulenburg handed him with a curtsey to his
aunt, Catherine, who, with a stern look on her face, was dressed in a
newly remade lilac silk dress, and wore Crown jewels in her hair. She
laid him, when the moment came, solemnly in his mother Dorothea's arms,
who, in all her stately beauty, with a smile on her proud and lovely
mouth, held him out a while to be blessed, and then passed him on. A
cousin held him for a minute or two, a child of eleven or twelve years
with fair hair, thin sticks of legs, cold bare arms, and a broad red
silk sash which stuck out in a huge knot behind her white dress. Her
peaked face was anxiously fixed on the Master of the Ceremonies....

Once the Prince woke up, but the flickering flames of the altar-candles
and a many-coloured shaft of sunlight dust blinded him, and made him
close his eyes again. And as there were no thoughts, but only soft
unsubstantial dreams in his head, as moreover he was feeling no pain at
the moment, he at once fell asleep again.

He received a number of names while he slept; but the chief names were
Klaus Heinrich.

And he slept on in his cot with its gilded cornice and blue silk
curtains, while the royal family feasted in the Marble Hall, and the
rest of the guests in the Hall of the Knights, in his honour.

The newspapers reported his first appearance; they described his looks
and his dress, and emphasized his truly princely behaviour, couching the
moving and inspiring account in words which had often done duty on
similar occasions. After that, the public for a long time heard little
of him, and he nothing of them.

He knew nothing as yet, understood nothing as yet, guessed nothing as to
the difficulty, danger, and sternness of the life prescribed for him;
nothing in his conduct suggested that he felt any contrast between
himself and the great public. His little existence was an irresponsible,
carefully supervised dream, played on a stage remote from the public
stage; and this stage was peopled with countless tinted phantoms, both
stationary and active, some emerging but transiently, some permanently
at hand.

Of the permanent ones, the parents were far in the back-ground, and not
altogether distinguishable. They were his parents, that was certain, and
they were exalted, and friendly too. When they approached there was a
feeling as if everything else slipped away to each side, and left a
respectable passage along which they advanced towards him to show him a
moment's tenderness. The nearest and clearest things to him were two
women with white caps and aprons, two beings who were obviously all
goodness, purity, and loving-kindness, who tended his little body in
every way, and were much distressed when he cried.... A close partner in
his life, too, was Albrecht, his brother; but he was grave, distant, and
much more advanced.

When Klaus Heinrich was two years old, another birth took place in the
Grimmburg, and a princess came into the world. Thirty-six guns were
allotted to her, because she was of the female sex, and she was given
the name of Ditlinde at the font. She was Klaus Heinrich's sister, and
it was a good thing for him that she appeared. She was at first
surprisingly small and weak, but she soon grew like him, caught him up,
and the two became inseparable. They shared each other's lives, each
other's views, feelings, and ideas: they communicated to each other
their impressions of the world outside them.

It was a world, they were impressions, calculated to produce a
reflective frame of mind. In winter they lived in the old castle. In
summer they lived in Hollerbrunn, the summer schloss, on the river, in
the cool, in the scent of the violet hedges with white statues between
them. On the way thither, or if at any other time father or mother took
them with them in one of the brown carriages with the little golden
crown on the door, all the passers-by stopped, cheered, and took their
hats off; for father was Prince and Ruler of the country, consequently
they themselves were Prince and Princess--undoubtedly in precisely the
same sense as were the princes and princesses in the French stories
which their Swiss governess told them. That was worth consideration, it
was at any rate a peculiar occurrence. When other children heard the
stories, they necessarily regarded the princes which figured in them
from a great distance, and as solemn beings whose rank was a
glorification of reality and with whom to concern themselves was
undoubtedly a chastening of their thoughts, and an escape from the
ordinary existence. But Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde regarded the heroes
of the stories as their own equals and fellows, they breathed the same
air as them, they lived in a schloss like them, they stood on a
fraternal footing with them, and were justified in identifying
themselves with them. Was it their lot, then, to live always and
continually on the height to which others only climbed when stories were
being told to them? The Swiss governess, true to her general principles,
would have found it impossible to deny it, if the children had asked the
question in so many words.

The Swiss governess was the widow of a Calvinistic minister and was in
charge of both children, each of whom had two lady's maids as well. She
was black and white throughout: her cap was white and her dress black,
her face was white, with white warts on one cheek, and her smooth hair
had a mixed black-and-white metallic sheen. She was very precise and
easily put out. When things happened which, though quite without danger,
could not be allowed, she clasped her white hands and turned her eyes up
to heaven. But her quietest and severest mode of punishment for serious
occasions was to "look sadly" at the children--implying that they had
lost their self-respect. On a fixed day she began, on a hint from higher
quarters, to address Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde as "Grand Ducal
Highness," and from that day she was more easily put out than before....

But Albrecht was called "Royal Highness." Aunt Catherine's children were
members of the family only on the distaff side, and so were of less
importance. But Albrecht was Crown Prince and Heir Apparent, so that it
was not at all unfitting that he should look so pale and distant and
keep so much to his bed. He wore Austrian coats with flap pockets and
cut long behind. His head had a big bump at the back and narrow temples,
and he had a long face. While still quite young he had come through a
serious illness, which, in the opinion of Surgeon-General Eschrich, was
the reason for his heart having "shifted over to the right." However
that might be, he had seen Death face to face, a fact which had probably
intensified the shy dignity which was natural to him. He seemed to be
extremely standoffish, cold from embarrassment, and proud from lack of
graciousness. He lisped a little and then blushed at doing so, because
he was always criticizing himself. His shoulder-blades were a little
uneven. One of his eyes had some weakness or other, so that he used
glasses for writing his exercises, which helped to make him look old and
wise.... Albrecht's tutor, Doctor Veit, a man with hanging mud-coloured
moustaches, hollow cheeks, and wan eyes unnaturally far apart, was
always at his left hand. Doctor Veit was always dressed in black, and
carried a book dangling down his thigh, with his index-finger thrust
between its leaves.

Klaus Heinrich felt that Albrecht did not care much for him, and he saw
that it was not only because of his inferiority in years. He himself was
tender-hearted and prone to tears, that was his nature. He cried, when
anybody "looked sadly" at him, and when he knocked his forehead against
a corner of the nursery table, so that it bled, he howled from sympathy
with his forehead. But Albrecht had faced Death, yet never cried on any
condition. He stuck his short, rounded underlip a little forward, and
sucked it lightly against the upper one--that was all. He was most
superior. The Swiss governess referred in so many words to him in
matters of _comme il faut_ as a model. He had never allowed himself to
converse with the gorgeous creatures who belonged to the court, not
exactly men and human beings, but lackeys--as Klaus Heinrich had
sometimes done in unguarded moments. For Albrecht was not curious. The
look in his eyes was that of a lonely boy, who had no wish to let the
world intrude upon him. Klaus Heinrich, on the contrary, chatted with
the lackeys from that same wish, and from an urgent though perhaps
dangerous and improper desire to feel some contact with what lay outside
the charmed circle. But the lackeys, young and old, at the doors, in the
corridors and the passage-rooms, with their sand-coloured gaiters and
brown coats, on the red-gold lace of which the same little crown as on
the carriage doors was repeated again and again--they straightened their
knees when Klaus Heinrich chatted to them, laid their great hands on the
seams of the thick velvet breeches, bent a little forward towards him,
so that the aiguillettes dangled from their shoulders, and returned
various, highly proper answers, the most important part of which was the
address "Grand Ducal Highness," and smiled as they did so with an
expression of cautious sympathy, which recalled the words of the old
song, "The lad that is born to be king." Sometimes when he got the
chance, Klaus Heinrich went on voyages of discovery in uninhabited parts
of the schloss, with Ditlinde, his sister, when she was old enough.

At that time he was having lessons from Schulrat Dröge, Rector of the
city schools, who was chosen to be his first tutor. Schulrat Dröge was a
born pedagogue. His index-finger, with its folds of dry skin and gold
stoneless signet-ring, followed the line of print when Klaus Heinrich
read, waiting before going on to the next word until the preceding one
had been read. He came in a frock-coat and white waistcoat, with the
ribbon of some inferior order in his button-hole, and in broad shiny
boots with brown upper-leathers. He wore a pointed grey beard, and bushy
grey hair grew out of his big, broad ears. His brown hair was brushed up
into points on his temples, and so precisely parted as to show clearly
his yellow dry scalp, which was full of holes like canvas. But thin grey
hair was visible under the strong brown hair behind and at the sides. He
bowed slightly to the lackeys who opened the door for him to the big
schoolroom at whose table Klaus Heinrich sat waiting for him. But to
Klaus Heinrich he did not confine himself to a superficial bow as he
entered the room, but made a pronounced and deliberate bow before he
came up to him, and waited for his exalted pupil to offer him his hand.
This Klaus Heinrich did; and the fact that he did so twice, not only
when he greeted him, but also when he took his departure, just in the
graceful and winning way in which he had seen his father give his hand
to those who expected it, seemed to him far more important and essential
than all the instruction which came between the two ceremonies.

After Schulrat Dröge had come and gone any number of times, Klaus
Heinrich had imperceptibly gained a knowledge of all sorts of practical
things: to everybody's surprise he was quite at home in every kind of
reading, writing, and arithmetic, and could reel off to order the names
of the towns in the Grand Duchy pretty well without an omission. But, as
has been said, this was not what was in his opinion really necessary and
essential for him. From time to time, when he was inattentive at his
lessons, the Schulrat rebuked him with a reference to his exalted
calling. "Your exalted calling requires you ..." he would say or: "You
owe it to your exalted calling...." What was his calling, and how was it
exalted? Why did the lackeys smile as if to say, "The lad that is born
to be king," and why was his governess so much put out when he let
himself go a little in speech or action? He looked round him, and at
times, when he looked steadily and long and forced himself to probe the
essence of the phenomena around him, a dim apprehension arose in him of
the "aloofness" of his position.

He was standing in one of the "gala rooms," the Silver Hall, in which,
as he knew, his father the Grand Duke received solemn deputations--he
happened to have wandered into it by himself and he took stock of his
surroundings.

It was winter-time and cold, his little shoes were reflected in the
glass-clear yellow squares of the parquet which spread like a sheet of
ice before him. The ceiling, covered with silvered arabesque-work, was
so high that a long metal shaft was necessary to allow the many-armed
silver chandelier with its forest of tall white candles to swing in the
middle of the great space. Below the ceiling came silver-framed
coats-of-arms in faded colours. The walls were edged with silver, and
hung with white silk with yellow spots, not to mention a split here and
there. A sort of monumental baldachin, resting on two strong silver
columns and decorated in front with a silver garland, broken in two
places, from the top of which looked down a portrait of a deceased,
powdered ancestress draped in imitation ermine, formed the
chimney-piece. On each side of the fireplace were broad silvered
arm-chairs upholstered in torn white silk. On the side walls opposite
each other towered enormous silver-framed mirrors, whose glass was
covered with blind spots, and on each side of whose broad white marble
ledges stood two candelabra which carried big white candles like the
sconces on the walls all round, and like the four silver candlesticks
which stood in the corners. Before the high windows to the right,
looking over the Albrechtsplatz, whose outer ledges were covered with
snow, white silk curtains, yellow spotted, with silver cords and trimmed
with lace, fell in rich, and heavy folds to the floor. In the middle of
the room, under the chandelier, a moderate-sized table, with a pedestal
made like a knobby silver tree-stump and a top made of eight triangles
of opaque mother-of-pearl, stood useless, as there were no chairs round
it, and it could only serve, and be meant to serve, at the very best, as
a support for your Highness, when the lackeys opened the doors and
ushered in the solemn figures in Court dress who came to present their
respects to you....

Klaus Heinrich looked round the hall, and clearly saw that there was
nothing here which reminded him of the realities which Schulrat Dröge,
for all his bows, was always impressing upon him. Here all was Sunday
and solemnity, just as in church, where also he would have felt the
calls made on him by his tutor out of place. Everything here was severe
and empty show and a formal symmetry, self-sufficient, pointless, and
uncomfortable--whose functions were obviously to create an atmosphere of
awe and tension, not of freedom and ease, to inculcate an attitude of
decorum and discreet self-obliteration towards an unnamed object. And it
was cold in the silver hall--cold as in the halls of the snow-king,
where the children's hearts froze stiff.

Klaus Heinrich walked over the glassy floor and stood at the table in
the middle. He laid his right hand lightly on the mother-of-pearl table,
and placed the left hand on his hip, so far behind that it rested almost
in the small of his back, and was not visible from in front, for it was
an ugly sight, brown and wrinkled, and had not kept pace with the right
in its growth. He stood resting on one leg, with the other a little
advanced, and kept his eyes fixed on the silver ornaments of the door.
It was not the place nor the attitude for dreaming, and yet he dreamed.

He saw his father, and looked at him as he looked at the hall, to try to
grasp his meaning. He saw the dull haughtiness of his blue eyes, the
furrows which, proudly and morosely, ran from nostril down to his beard,
and were often deepened or accentuated by weariness and boredom....
Nobody dared to address him or to go freely up to him and speak to him
unasked--not even the children: it was forbidden, it was dangerous. He
answered, it is true: but he answered distantly and coldly, a look of
helplessness, of _gêne_, passed over his face, which Klaus Heinrich was
quite able to understand.

Papa made a speech and sent his petitioners away; that is what always
happened. He gave an audience at the beginning of the Court ball, and at
the end of the dinner with which the winter began. He went with mamma
through the rooms and halls, in which the members of the Court were
gathered, went through the Marble Hall and the Gala Rooms, through the
Picture Gallery, the Hall of the Knights, the Hall of the Twelve Months,
the Audience Chamber, and the Ball-room--went not only in a fixed
direction, but along a fixed path which bustling Herr von Bühl kept free
for him, and addressed a few words to the assembled throng. Whoever was
addressed by him bowed low, left a space of parquet between himself and
papa, and answered soberly and with signs of gratification. Thereupon
papa greeted them over the intervening space, from the stronghold of
precise regulations which prescribed the others' movements and warranted
his own attitude, greeted them smilingly and lightly and passed on.
Smilingly and lightly.... Of course, of course, Klaus Heinrich quite
understood it, the look of helplessness which passed for one moment over
papa's face when anybody was impetuous enough to address him
unasked--understood it, and shared his feeling of _gêne_! It wounded
something, some soft, virgin envelope of our existence which was so
essential to it that we stood helpless when anybody roughly broke
through it. And yet it was this same something which made our eyes so
dull, and gave us those deep furrows of boredom....

Klaus Heinrich stood and saw--he saw his mother and her beauty, which
was famed and extolled far and wide. He saw her standing _en robe de
ceremonie_, in front of her great candle-lighted glass, for sometimes,
on solemn occasions, he was allowed to be present when the Court
hairdresser and the bed-chamber women put the last touches to her
toilette. Herr von Knobelsdorff also was present when mamma put on
jewels from the Crown regalia, watched and noted down the stones which
she decided to use. With all the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes
showing, he would make mamma laugh with his droll remarks, so that her
soft cheeks filled with lovely little dimples. But her laugh was full of
art and grace, and she looked in the glass as she laughed, as if she
were practising it.

People said that Slav blood flowed in her veins, and that it was that
which gave the sweet radiance to her deep-blue eyes and the night of her
raven hair. Klaus Heinrich was like her, so he heard people say, in that
he too had steel-blue eyes with dark hair, while Albrecht and Ditlinde
were fair, just as papa had been before his hair turned grey. But he was
far from handsome, owing to the breadth of his cheek-bones, and
especially to his left hand, which mamma was always reminding him to
hide adroitly, in the side-pocket of his coat, behind his back, or under
the breast of his jacket--especially when his affectionate impulses
prompted him to throw both his arms round her. Her look was cold when
she bade him mind his hand.

He saw her as she was in the picture in the Marble Hall: in a short silk
dress with lace flounces and long gloves, which showed only a glimpse of
her ivory arm under her puffed sleeves, a diadem in the night of her
hair, her stately form erect, a smile of cool perfection on her
strangely hard lips--and behind her the metallic-blue wheel of a
peacock's tail. Her face was soft, but its beauty made it stern, and it
was easy to see that her heart too was stern and absorbed in her beauty.
She slept far into the day when a ball or party was in prospect, and ate
only yolks of eggs, so as not to overload herself. Then in the evening
she was radiant as she walked on papa's arm along the prescribed path
through the halls--grey-haired dignitaries blushed when they were
addressed by her, and the _Courier_ reported that it was not only
because of her exalted rank that her Royal Highness had been the queen
of the ball. Yes, people felt happier for the sight of her, whether it
was at the Court or outside in the streets, or in the afternoon driving
or riding in the park--and their cheeks kindled. Flowers and cheers met
her, all hearts went out to her, and it was clear that the people in
cheering her were cheering themselves, and that their glad cries meant
that they were cheered and elevated by the sight of her. But Klaus
Heinrich knew well that mamma had spent long, anxious hours on her
beauty, that there was practice and method in her smiles and greetings,
and that her own pulse beat never the quicker for anything or anyone.

Did she love anyone--himself, Klaus Heinrich, for instance, for all his
likeness to her? Why, of course she did, when she had time to, even when
she coldly reminded him of his hand. But it seemed as if she reserved
any expression or sign of her tender feelings for occasions when
lookers-on were present who were likely to be edified by them. Klaus
Heinrich and Ditlinde did not often come into contact with their mother,
chiefly because they, unlike Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, for some time
past, did not have their meals at their parents' table, but apart with
the Swiss governess; and when they were summoned to mamma's boudoir,
which happened once a week, the interview consisted in a few casual
questions and polite answers--giving no scope for displays of feeling,
while its whole drift seemed to be the proper way to sit in an arm-chair
with a teacup full of milk.

But at the concerts which took place in the Marble Hall every other
Thursday under the name of "The Grand Duchess's Thursdays," and were so
arranged that the Court sat at little gilt-legged velvet-covered tables,
while the leading tenor Schramm from the Court Theatre, accompanied by
an orchestra, sang so lustily that the veins swelled on his bald
temples--at the concerts Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde, in their best
clothes, were sometimes allowed in the Hall for one song and the
succeeding pause, when mamma showed how fond she was of them, showed it
to them and to everybody else in so heartfelt and expressive a way that
nobody could have any doubt about it. She summoned them to the table at
which she sat, and told them with a happy smile to sit beside her, laid
their cheeks on her shoulders or bosom, looked at them with a soft,
soulful look in her eyes and kissed them both on forehead and mouth.
Then the ladies bent their heads and their eyelids quivered, while the
men slowly nodded and bit their lips in order, in manly wise, to
restrain their emotions.... Yes, it was beautiful, and the children felt
they had their share in the effect, which was greater than anything
Schramm the singer could procure with his most inspired notes, and
nestled close to mamma. For Klaus Heinrich at last realized that it was
in the nature of things, no business of ours, to have a simple feeling
and to be made happy by it, but that it was our duty to make our
tenderness visible to the Hall and to exhibit it, that the hearts of our
guests might swell.

Occasionally the people outside in the town and park also were allowed
to see that mamma loved us. For while Albrecht drove or rode--bad rider
though he was--with the Grand Duke early in the morning, Klaus Heinrich
and Ditlinde had from time to time to take turns at accompanying mamma
on her drives, which took place in the spring and autumn at the time of
the afternoon promenade, with Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen in
attendance. Klaus Heinrich was a little excited and feverish before
these drives, to which unfortunately no enjoyment, but on the contrary a
great deal of trouble and effort attached. For, directly the open
carriage came out through the Lions Gate on to the Albrechtsplatz, past
the grenadiers at the "present," there were a lot of people collected,
waiting for it--men, women, and children, who shouted and stared full of
curiosity; and that meant pulling oneself together, sitting up erect,
smiling, hiding the left hand, and saluting in such a way as to make the
people happy. And so it went on right through the city and the fields.
Other vehicles were obliged to keep away from ours; the police looked to
that. But the foot-passengers stood on the kerb, the women curtseyed,
the men took off their hats and looked with eyes full of devotion and
importunate curiosity,--and this was the impression Klaus Heinrich got:
that they all were there just to be there and to stare, while he was
there to show himself and to be stared at; and his was far the harder
part. He kept his left hand in his coat-pocket and smiled as mamma
wished him to, while he felt that his cheeks were aglow. But the
_Courier_ reported that the rosy redness of our little duke's cheeks
showed what a healthy boy he was.

Klaus Heinrich was thirteen years old when he stood at the solitary
mother-of-pearl table in the middle of the cold silver hall, and tried
to probe the reality of things around him. And as he scrutinized the
various phenomena: the empty, torn pride of the room, aimless and
uncomfortable, the symmetry of the white candles, which seemed to
express awe and tension and discreet self-obliteration, the passing
shadow on his father's face when anybody addressed him unasked, the cool
and calculated beauty of his mother, whose one object was admiration,
the devoted and importunately curious gaze of the people outside--then a
suspicion seized him, a vague and approximate conception of his
situation. But simultaneously horror seized him, terror at such a
destiny, a dread of his "exalted calling," so strong that he turned
round and covered his eyes with both his hands--both, the little
wrinkled left one too--and sank down at the lonely table and cried,
cried from sympathy with himself and his heart--till they came, and
wrung their hands and turned their eyes up to heaven and questioned him,
and led him away.... He gave out that he had been frightened, and that
was quite true.

He had known nothing, understood nothing, suspected nothing of the
difficulty and sternness of the life prescribed for him; he had been
merry and careless, and had given his guardians many a scare. But there
was no resisting the impressions which soon came thronging upon him and
forcing him to open his eyes to the real state of things. In the
northern suburbs, not far from the spa-gardens, a new road had been
opened: people told him that the City Council had decided to call it
"Klaus Heinrich Strasse." Once when driving out with his mother and he
called at a picture-dealer's, they wanted to buy something. The footman
waited at the carriage door, the public gathered round, the
picture-dealer bustled about--there was nothing new in all that. But
Klaus Heinrich for the first time noticed his photograph in the shop
window. It was hanging next those of artists and great men, men with
lofty brows, with a look of the loneliness of fame in their eyes.

People were satisfied with him on the whole. He gained dignity with
years, and self-possession under the pressure of his exalted calling.
But the strange thing was that his longing increased at the same time:
that roving inquisitiveness which Schulrat Dröge was not the man to
satisfy, and which had impelled him to chat with the lackeys. He had
given up doing that; it did not lead to anything. They smiled at him,
confirming him by that very laugh in the suspicion that his world of the
symmetrically marshalled candles presented an unconscious antithesis to
the world outside, but they were no manner of help to him. He looked
round about him on the expeditions, in the walks he took through the
town gardens with Ditlinde and the Swiss governess, followed by a
lackey. He felt that if they were all of one mind to stare at him, while
he was all alone and made conspicuous just to be stared at, he also had
no share in their being and doing. He realized that they presumably were
not always as he saw them, when they stood and greeted him with
deferential looks; that it must be his birth and upbringing which made
their looks deferential, and that it was with them as with the children
when they heard about fairy princes, and were thereby refined and
elevated above their work-a-day selves. But he did not know what they
looked like and were when they were not refined and elevated above their
work-a-day selves--his "exalted calling" concealed this from him, and it
was a dangerous and improper wish to allow his heart to be moved by
things which his exaltedness concealed from him. And yet he wished it,
he wished it from a jealousy and that roving inquisitiveness which
sometimes drove him to undertake voyages of exploration into unknown
regions of the old Schloss, with Ditlinde his sister, when the
opportunity offered.

They called it "rummaging," and great was the charm of "rummaging"; for
it was difficult to acquire familiarity with the ground-plan and
structure of the old Schloss, and every time they penetrated far enough
into the remoter parts they found rooms, closets, and empty halls which
they had not yet trodden, or strange round-about ways to already-known
rooms. But once when thus wandering about they had a rencontre, an
adventure befell them, which made a great impression on Klaus Heinrich,
though he did not show it, and opened his eyes.

The opportunity came. While the Swiss governess was absent on leave to
attend the evening service, they had drunk their milk from tea-cups with
the Grand Duchess, accompanied by the two ladies-in-waiting, had been
dismissed and directed to go back hand-in-hand to their ordinary
occupations in the nursery, which lay not far off. It was thought that
they needed nobody to go with them; Klaus Heinrich was old enough to
take care of Ditlinde, of course. He was; and in the corridor he said:
"Yes, Ditlinde, we will certainly go back to the nursery, but we need
not go, you know, the shortest, dullest way. We'll rummage a bit first.
If you go up one step and follow the corridor as far as where the arches
begin, you'll find a hall with pillars behind them, and if you go out of
one of the doors of the hall with pillars--clamber up the corkscrew
staircase, you come to a room with a wooden roof; and there are lots of
funny things lying about there. But I don't know what comes after the
room, and that's what we've got to find out. So let's go."

"Yes, let's," said Ditlinde, "but not too far, Klaus Heinrich, and not
where it's too dusty, for this dress shows everything."

She was wearing a dress of dark-red velvet, trimmed with satin of the
same colour. She had at that time dimples in her elbows, and light
golden hair, that curled round her ears like ram's horns. In after years
she was pale and thin. She too had the broad, rather over-prominent
cheek-bones of her father and nation, but they were not accentuated, so
that they did not spoil the lines of her face. But with Klaus Heinrich
they were strong and emphatic, so that they seemed somewhat to encroach
upon, to narrow and to lengthen his steel-coloured eyes. His dark hair
was smoothly parted, cut in a careful rectangle on the temples, and
brushed straight back from the forehead. He wore an open jacket with a
waistcoat buttoning at the throat and a white turn-down collar. In his
right hand he held Ditlinde's little hand, but his left arm hung down,
with its brown, wrinkled, and undeveloped hand, thin and short from the
shoulder. He was glad that he could let it hang without bothering to
conceal it; for there was nobody there to stare and to require to be
elevated and inspired, and he himself might stare and examine to his
heart's content.

So they went and rummaged as they liked. Quiet reigned in the corridors,
and they saw hardly a lackey in the distance. They climbed up a
staircase and followed the passage till they came to the arches, showing
that they were in the part of the Schloss which dated from the time of
John the Headstrong and Heinrich the Confessor, as Klaus Heinrich knew
and explained. They came to the hall of the pillars, and Klaus Heinrich
there whistled several notes close after each other, for the first were
still sounding when the last came, and so a clear chord rang under the
vaulted ceiling. They scrambled groping and often on hands and knees up
the stone winding staircase which opened behind one of the heavy doors,
and reached the room with the wooden ceiling, in which there were
several strange objects. There were some broken muskets of clumsy size
with thickly rusted locks, which had been too bad for the museum, and a
discarded throne with torn red velvet cushions, short wide-splayed
lion-legs, and cupids hovering over the chair-back, bearing a crown.
Then there was a wicked-looking, dusty, cage-like, and horribly
interesting thing, which intrigued them much and long. If they were not
quite mistaken, it was a rat-trap, for they could see the iron spike to
put the bacon on, and it was dreadful to think how the trap-door must
fall down behind the great beast.... Yes, this took time, and when they
stood up after examining the rat-trap their faces were hot, and their
clothes stiff with rust and dust. Klaus Heinrich brushed them both down,
but that did not do much good, for his hands were as filthy as his
clothes. And suddenly they saw that dusk had begun to fall. They must
return quickly, Ditlinde insisted anxiously on that; it was too late to
go any farther.

"That's an awful pity," said Klaus Heinrich. "Who knows what else we
mightn't have found, and when we shall get another chance of rummaging,
Ditlinde!" But he followed his sister and they hurried back down the
turret-stairs, crossed the hall of the pillars, and came out into the
arcade, intending to hurry home hand-in-hand.

Thus they wandered on for a time; but Klaus Heinrich shook his head, for
it seemed to him that this was not the way he had come. They went still
farther; but several signs told them that they had mistaken their
direction. This stone seat with the griffin-heads was not standing here
before. That pointed window looked to the west over the low-lying
quarter of the town and not over the inner courtyard with the rose-bush.
They were going wrong, it was no use denying it; perhaps they had left
the hall of the pillars by a wrong exit--anyhow they had absolutely lost
their way.

They went back a little, but their disquietude would not allow them to
go very far back, so they turned right about again, and decided to push
on the way they had already come, and to trust to luck. Their way lay
through a damp, stuffy atmosphere, and great undisturbed cobwebs
stretched across the corners; they went with heavy hearts, and Ditlinde
especially was full of repentance and on the brink of tears. People
would notice her absence, would "look sadly" at her, perhaps even tell
the Grand Duke; they would never find the way, would be forgotten and
die of hunger. And where there was a rat-trap, Klaus Heinrich, there
were also rats.... Klaus Heinrich comforted her. They only had to find
the place where the armour and crossed standards hung; from that point
he was quite sure of the direction. And suddenly--they had just passed a
bend in the winding passage--suddenly something happened. It startled
them dreadfully.

What they had heard was more than the echo of their own steps, they were
other, strange steps, heavier than theirs; they came towards them now
quickly, now hesitatingly, and were accompanied by a snorting and
grumbling which made their blood run cold. Ditlinde made as if to run
away from fright: but Klaus Heinrich would not let go her hand, and they
stood with starting eyes waiting for what was coming.

It was a man who was just visible in the half-darkness, and, calmly
considered, his appearance was not horrifying. He was squat in figure,
and dressed like a veteran soldier. He wore a frock-coat of
old-fashioned cut, a woollen comforter round his neck and a medal on his
breast. He held in one hand a curly top-hat and in the other the bone
handle of his clumsily rolled-up umbrella, which he tapped on the flags
in time with his steps. His thin grey hair was plastered up from one ear
in wisps over his skull. He had bow-shaped black eyebrows, and a
yellow-white beard, which grew like the Grand Duke's, heavy upper-lids,
and watery blue eyes with pouches of withered skin under them; he had
the usual high cheek-bones, and the furrows of his sun-burnt face were
like crevasses. When he had come quite close he seemed to recognize the
children, for he placed himself against the outer wall of the passage,
at once fronted round and began to make a number of bows, consisting of
several short forward jerks of his whole body from the feet upwards,
while he imparted a look of honesty to his mouth and held his top-hat
crown-downwards in front of him. Klaus Heinrich meant to pass him by
with a nod, but was surprised into halting, for the veteran began to
speak.

"I beg pardon!" he suddenly grunted; then went on in a more natural
voice: "I earnestly beg your young Highnesses' pardon! But would your
young Highnesses take it amiss if I addressed to them the request that
they would very kindly acquaint me with the nearest way to the nearest
exit? It need not actually be the Albrechtstor--not in the least
necessary that it should be the Albrechtstor. But any exit from the
Schloss, if I dare be so free as to address this inquiry to your young
Highnesses...."

Klaus Heinrich had laid his left hand on his hip, right behind, so that
it lay almost in his back, and looked at the ground. The man had simply
spoken to him, had engaged him directly and unavoidably in conversation;
he thought of his father and knitted his brows. He pondered feverishly
over the question how he ought to behave in this topsy-turvy and
incorrect situation. Albrecht would have pursed up his mouth, sucked
with his short, rounded under-lip lightly against the upper, and passed
on in silence--so much was certain. But what was the use of rummaging if
at the first serious adventure one intended to pass on in dignity and
dudgeon? And the man was honest, and had nothing wicked about him: that
Klaus Heinrich could see when he forced himself to raise his eyes. He
simply said: "You come with us, that's the best way. I will willingly
show you where you must turn off to get to an exit." And they went on.

"Thanks!" said the man. "Ever so many thanks for your kindness! Heaven
knows I should never have thought that I should live to walk about the
Old Schloss one day with your young Highnesses. But there it is, and
after all my annoyance--for I have been annoyed, terribly annoyed,
that's true and certain--after all my annoyance I have at any rate this
honour and this satisfaction."

Klaus Heinrich longed to ask what might have been the reason for so much
annoyance; but the veteran went straight on (and tapped his umbrella in
regular time on the flags as he went). "... and I recognized your young
Highnesses at once, although it is a bit dark here in the passage, for I
have seen you many a time in the carriage, and was always delighted, for
I myself have just such a couple of brats at home--I mean to say, mine
are brats, mine are ... and the boy is called Klaus Heinrich too."

"Just like me?" said Klaus Heinrich, overjoyed.... "What luck!"

"There's no luck about it," said the man, "considering he was named
expressly after you, for he is a couple of months younger than you, and
there are lots of children in the town and country who are called that,
and all of them after you. No, one can hardly call it luck...."

Klaus Heinrich concealed his hand and remained silent.

"Yes, recognized you at once," said the man. "And I thought, thank
Heaven, thought I, that's what I call fortune in misfortune, and they'll
help you out of the trap into which you have stuck your nose, you old
blockhead, and you've good reason to laugh, thought I, for there's many
a one has trudged about here and been guyed by those popinjays, and
hasn't got out of it so well...."

Popinjays? thought Klaus Heinrich ... and guyed? He looked straight in
front of him, he did not dare to ask. A fear, a hope struck him.... He
said quite simply: "They ... they guyed you?"

"Not half!" said the man. "I should think they did, the ogres, and no
mistake! But I don't mind telling your young Highnesses, young though
you are, but it'll do you good to hear it, that these people here are a
set of wasters. A man comes and delivers his work as respectfully as
possible.... Yes, bless my soul!" he cried suddenly, and tapped his
forehead with his hat. "I haven't yet introduced myself to your young
Highnesses and told you who I am, have I?--Hinnerke!" he said,
"Master-cobbler Hinnerke, Royal warrant-holder, pensioner and
medallist." And he pointed with the index-finger of his great, rough,
yellow-spotted hand to the medal on his breast. "The fact is, that his
Royal Highness, your father, has been graciously pleased to order a pair
of boots from me, top-boots, riding-boots, with spurs, and made of the
best quality patent-leather. They're my speciality, and I made them
myself and took a lot of trouble about them, and they were ready to-day
and ever so smart. 'You must go yourself,' says I to myself.... I have a
boy who delivers, but I says to myself: 'You must go yourself, they are
for the Grand Duke.' So I rig myself out and take my boots and go to the
Schloss. 'All right,' say the lackeys down below, and want to take them
from me, 'No!' say I, for I don't trust them. It's my reputation gets me
my orders and my warrant, let me tell your Highnesses, not because I tip
the lackeys. But the fellows are spoilt by tips from the
warrant-holders, and want to get something out of me for their trouble.
'No,' say I, for I'm not a one for bribing and underhand dealings, 'I'll
deliver them myself, and if I can't give them to the Grand Duke himself,
I'll give them to Valet Prahl.' They looked daggers, but they say: 'Then
you must go up there!' And I go up there. There are some more of them up
there, and they say 'All right!' and want to take charge of the boots,
but I ask for Prahl and stick to it. They say: 'He's having his tea,'
but I'm determined and say, 'Then I'll wait till he's finished.' And
just as I say it, who comes by in his buckled shoes but Valet Prahl. And
he sees me, and I give him the boots with a few modest words, and he
says 'All right!' and actually adds: 'They're fine!' and nods and takes
them off. Now I'm satisfied, for Prahl, he's safe, so off I go. 'Hi!'
cries somebody. 'Mr. Hinnerke! You're going wrong!' 'Damn!' says I, and
right about, and go off in the other direction. But that was the
stupidest thing I could do, for they had sent me to Jericho, and that's
just where I don't want to go. I walk on a bit and meet another one, and
ask him the way to the Albrechtstor. But he spots at once what's up, and
says: 'Go up the stairs, and then keep to the left and then down again,
and you'll cut off a large corner!' And I believe he means it kindly and
do what he says, and get more and more muddled and altogether lose my
bearings. Then I see that it's not my fault, but the rogues', and it
strikes me that I have heard that they often play that trick on Court
tradesmen who don't tip them, and let them wander about till they sweat.
And my fury makes me blind and stupid, and I get to places where there's
not a living soul, and don't know where I am and get properly put about.
And at last I meet your young Highnesses. Yes, that's how it is with me
and my boots!" ended Shoemaker Hinnerke, and wiped his forehead with the
back of his hand.

Klaus Heinrich squeezed Ditlinde's hand. His heart beat so loud that he
absolutely forgot to hide his left hand. That was it. That was a touch
of it, an outline! No doubt about it, that was the sort of thing his
"exalted calling" shielded him from, the sort of thing people did when
they were in the ordinary, work-a-day frame of mind. The lackeys.... He
said nothing, words failed him.

"I see that your young Highnesses don't answer," said the shoemaker. And
his honest voice was filled with emotion. "I oughtn't to have told you,
because it isn't your business to get to know all the wickedness that
goes on. But yet I don't know," he said, laid his head on one side and
snapped his fingers, "that it can do any harm, that it can do you any
harm for the future and later on...."

"The lackeys ..." said Klaus Heinrich, and took a plunge ... "are they
wicked? I can quite well fancy ..."

"Wicked?" said the cobbler. "Good-for-nothings they are. That's the name
for them. Do you know what they're good for? They keep the goods back
when no tip's forthcoming, keep them back when the tradesman delivers
them punctually at the time ordered, and only hand them over days late,
so that the tradesman gets blamed, and is considered by the Grand Duke
to have failed in his duty and he loses his orders. That's what they do
without scruple, and the whole town knows it...."

"That's most annoying!" said Klaus Heinrich. He listened, listened. He
hardly realized how much shocked he was. "Do they do anything else?" he
said. "I'm quite sure they must do other things of the same kind."

"You bet!" said the man, and laughed. "No, they don't miss a chance, let
me tell your Highnesses, they have all sorts of dodges. There's the
door-opening joke, for instance.... That's like this. Your father, our
gracious Grand Duke, grants an audience to somebody, let's suppose he's
a new hand and it's his first time at Court. And he comes in a frock
coat all sweat and shivers, for it is of course no trifle to stand
before his Royal Highness for the first time. And the lackeys laugh at
him, because they're quite at home here, and tow him into the ante-room,
and he doesn't know where he is, and absolutely forgets to tip the
lackeys. But then comes his moment, and the adjutant says his name, and
the lackeys throw open the double-doors and let him into the room in
which the Grand Duke is waiting. Then the new hand stands there and bows
and says what he has to say, and the Grand Duke graciously gives him his
hand, and so he is dismissed and walks backwards, and thinks the
folding-doors are going to open behind him, as he has been definitely
promised. But they don't open, I tell your Highnesses, for the lackeys
have got their knife into him, because they haven't been tipped, and
don't stir a finger for him outside there. But he daren't turn round,
absolutely daren't, because he daren't show the Grand Duke his back,
that would be grossly bad manners and an insult to his Highness. And
then he feels behind him for the door-handle and can't find it, and gets
the jumps and scrabbles around on the door, and when at last by the
mercy of Providence he finds the knob it's an old-fashioned lock, and he
doesn't understand it and fiddles and dislocates his arm and tires
himself out and keeps bowing all the time in his agitation, until at
last his Highness graciously lets him out with his own hand. Yes, that's
the door-opening joke! But that's nothing to what I'm going to tell your
Highness...."

They had been so deep in conversation that they had scarcely noticed
where they were going, had gone down the stairs and reached the
ground-floor, close to the Albrechtstor. Eiermann, one of the Grand
Duchess's grooms-of-the-chamber, came towards them. He wore a violet
coat and side-whiskers. He had been sent out to look for their Grand
Ducal Highnesses. He shook his head while still at a distance, in lively
concern, and pursed his mouth up like a funnel. But when he noticed
Shoemaker Hinnerke walking with the children and tapping with his
umbrella, all the muscles of his face relaxed and his jaw dropped.

There was scarcely time for thanks and farewells, Eiermann was in such a
hurry to part the children from the shoemaker. And with many a gloomy
prophecy he led their Grand Ducal Highnesses up to their room to the
Swiss governess.

Eyes were turned to heaven, hands were wrung about their absence and the
state of their clothes. The worst of all happened, they were "looked at
sadly." But Klaus Heinrich confined his contrition to the bare minimum.
He thought: "So the lackeys took money and let the tradesmen wander
about the corridors if they did not get any, kept the goods back, that
the tradesmen might get blamed, and did not open the folding-doors, so
that the suitor had to scrabble. That's what happened in the Schloss,
and what must it be outside? Outside among the people who stared at him
so respectfully and so strangely, when he drove by with his hand to his
hat ...? But how had the man dared to tell it him? Not one single time
had he called him Grand Ducal Highness; he had forced himself on him and
offended his birth and upbringing. And yet, why was it so
extraordinarily pleasant to hear all that about the lackeys? Why did his
heart beat with such rapt pleasure, when moved by some of the wild and
bold things in which his Highness bore no part?"




IV

DOCTOR UEBERBEIN


Klaus Heinrich spent three of his boyhood's years in the company of boys
of his own age of the Court and country nobility of the monarchy in an
institution, a kind of aristocratic seminary, which von Knobelsdorff,
the House Minister, had founded and set in order on his behalf in the
"Pheasantry" hunting-schloss.

A Crown property for centuries past, Schloss "Pheasantry" gave its name
to the first stopping-place of a State railway running north-west from
the capital, and itself took it from a "tame" pheasant preserve,
situated not far off among the meadows and woods, which had been the
hobby of a former ruler. The Schloss, a one-storied box-like country
house with a shingle roof topped by lightning conductors, stood with
stables and coach-house on the skirts of extensive fir plantations. With
a row of aged lime trees in front, it looked out over a broad expanse of
meadowland fringed by a distant bluish circle of woods and intersected
by paths, with many a bare patch of play-ground and hurdles for obstacle
riding. Opposite the corner of the Schloss was a refreshment pavilion, a
beer and coffee garden planted with high trees, which a prudent man
called Stavenüter had rented and which was thronged on Sundays in summer
by excursionists, especially bicyclists, from the capital. The pupils of
the "Pheasantry" were only allowed to visit the pavilion in charge of a
tutor.

There were five of them, not counting Klaus Heinrich: Trümmerhauff,
Gumplach, Platow, Prenzlau, and Wehrzahn. They were called "the
Pheasants" in the country round. They had a landau from the Court
stables which had seen its best days, a dog-cart, a sledge, and a few
hacks, and when in winter some of the meadows were flooded and frozen
over, they had an opportunity of skating. There was one cook, two
chamber-maids, one coachman, and two lackeys at the "Pheasantry," one of
whom could drive at a pinch.

Professor Kürtchen, a little suspicious and irritable bachelor with the
airs of a comic actor and the manners of an old French chevalier, was
head of the seminary. He wore a stubby grey moustache, a pair of gold
spectacles in front of his restless brown eyes, and always out-of-doors
a top hat on the back of his head. He stuck his belly out as he walked
and held his little fists on each side of his stomach like a
long-distance runner. He treated Klaus Heinrich with self-satisfied
tact, but was full of suspicion of the noble arrogance of his other
pupils and fired up like a tom-cat when he scented any signs of contempt
for him as a commoner. He loved when out for a walk, if there were
people close by, to stop and gather his pupils in a knot around him and
explain something to them, drawing diagrams in the sand with his stick.
He addressed Frau Amelung, the housekeeper, a captain's widow who smelt
strongly of drugs, as "my lady" and showed thus that he knew what was
what in the best circles.

Professor Kürtchen was helped by a yet younger assistant teacher with a
doctor's degree--a good-humoured, energetic man, bumptious but
enthusiastic, who influenced Klaus Heinrich's views and conscience
perhaps more than was good for him. A gymnastic instructor called Zotte
had also been appointed. The assistant teacher, it may be remarked in
passing, was called Ueberbein, Raoul Ueberbein. The rest of the staff
came every day by railway from the capital.

Klaus Heinrich remarked with appreciation that the demands made on him
from the point of view of learning quickly abated. Schulrat Dröge's
wrinkled fore-finger no longer paused on the lines, he had done his
work; and during the lessons as well as while correcting his written
work Professor Kürtchen seized every opportunity of showing his tact.

One day, quite soon after the institution had started--it was after
luncheon in the high-windowed dining-room--he summoned Klaus Heinrich
into his study, and said in so many words: "It is contrary to the public
interest that your Grand Ducal Highness, during our scientific studies
together, should be compelled to answer questions which are at the
moment unwelcome to you. On the other hand, it is desirable that your
Grand Ducal Highness should continually announce your readiness to
answer by holding up your hand. I beg your Grand Ducal Highness
accordingly, for my own information, in the case of unwelcome questions,
to stretch out your arm to its full length, but in the case of those an
invitation to answer which would be agreeable to you, to raise it only
half way and in a right angle."

As for Doctor Ueberbein, he filled the schoolroom with a noisy flow of
words, whose cheerfulness disguised the teacher's object without losing
sight of it altogether. He had come to no sort of understanding with
Klaus Heinrich, but questioned him when it occurred to him to do so, in
a free and friendly way without causing him any embarrassment. And Klaus
Heinrich's by no means apropos answers seemed to enchant Doctor
Ueberbein, to inspire him with warm enthusiasm. "Ha, ha," he would cry
and throw his head back laughing. "Oh, Klaus Heinrich! Oh, scion of
princes! Oh, your innocency! The crude problems of life have caught you
unprepared! Now then, it is for me with my experience to put you
straight." And he gave the answer himself, asked nobody else, when Klaus
Heinrich had answered wrong. The mode of instruction of the other
teachers bore the character of an unassuming lecture. And
gymnastic-instructor Zotte had received orders from high quarters to
conduct the physical exercises with every regard to Klaus Heinrich's
left hand--so strictly that the attention of the Prince himself or of
his companions should never be drawn unnecessarily to his little
failing. So the exercises were limited to running games, and during the
riding lessons, which Herr Zotte also gave, all feats of daring were
rigorously excluded.

Klaus Heinrich's relations with his comrades were not what one might
call intimate, they did not extend to actual familiarity. He stood for
himself, was never one of them, by no means counted amongst their
number. They were five and he was one; the Prince, the five, and the
teachers, that was the establishment. Several things stood in the way of
a free friendship. The five were there on Klaus Heinrich's account, they
were ordered to associate with him; when during the lessons he answered
wrong they were not asked to correct him, they had to adjust themselves
to his capacity when riding or playing. They were too often reminded of
the advantages they gained by being allowed to share his life. Some of
them, the young von Gumplach, von Platow, and von Wehrzahn, sons of
country squires of moderate means, were oppressed the whole time by the
gratified pride their parents had shown when the invitation from the
House Minister reached them, by the congratulations which had poured in
from every side.

Count Prenzlau on the other hand, that thick-set, red-haired, freckled
youth with the breathless way of speaking and the Christian name
Bogumil, was a sprig of the richest and noblest family of landowners in
the land, spoilt and self-conscious. He was well aware that his parents
had not been able to refuse Baron von Knobelsdorff's invitation, but
that it had not seemed to them by any means a blessing from the clouds,
and that he, Count Bogumil, could have lived much better and more in
accordance with his position on his father's property than at the
"Pheasantry." He found the hacks bad, the landau shabby, and the
dog-cart old-fashioned; he grumbled privately over the food.

Dagobert Count Trümmerhauff, a spare, greyhound-looking youth, who spoke
in a whisper, was inseparable from him. They had a word among themselves
which fully expressed their critical and aristocratic bent, and which
they constantly uttered in a biting tone of voice: "hog-wash." It was
hog-wash to have loose collars buttoning on to one's shirt. It was
hog-wash to play lawn-tennis in one's ordinary clothes.

But Klaus Heinrich felt himself unequal to using the word. He had not
hitherto been aware that there were such things as shirts with collars
sewed on to them and that people could possess so many changes of
clothes at one time as Bogumil Prenzlau. He would have liked to say
"hog-wash," but it occurred to him that he was wearing at that very time
darned socks. He felt inelegant by the side of Prenzlau and coarse
compared with Trümmerhauff. Trümmerhauff had the nobility of a wild
beast. He had a long pointed nose with a sharp bridge and broad,
quivering, thin-walled nostrils, blue veins on his delicate temples and
small ears without lobes. He wore broad coloured cuffs fastened with
gold links, and his hands were like those of a dainty woman, with
filbert nails; a gold bracelet adorned one of his wrists. He half closed
his eyes as he whispered.... No, it was obvious that Klaus Heinrich
could not compete with Trümmerhauff in elegance. His right hand was
rather broad, he had cheek-bones like the men in the street, and he
looked quite stumpy by Dagobert's side. It was quite possible that
Albrecht might have been better qualified to join the "Pheasants" in
their use of "hog-wash." Klaus Heinrich for his part was no aristocrat,
absolutely none, unmistakable facts showed that. For consider his name,
Klaus Heinrich, that's what the shoemaker's sons were called all over
the place. Herr Stavenüter's children over the road too, who blew their
noses with their fingers, bore the same names as himself, his parents,
and his brother. But the lordlings were called Bogumil and
Dagobert--Klaus Heinrich stood solitary and alone among the five.

However, he formed one friendship at the "Pheasantry," and it was with
Doctor Ueberbein. The Usher Raoul Ueberbein was not a handsome man. He
had a red beard and a greenish-white complexion with watery blue eyes,
thin red hair, and unusually ugly, protruding, sharp-pointed ears. But
his hands were small and delicate. He wore white ties exclusively, which
gave him rather a distinguished appearance, although his wardrobe was
scanty. He wore a long great-coat out-of-doors, and when riding--for Dr.
Ueberbein rode, and excellently well too--a worn-out frock-coat whose
skirts he fastened up with safety-pins, tight buttoned breeches, and a
high hat.

Where lay the attraction he exercised on Klaus Heinrich? That attraction
was very composite. The "Pheasants" had not been long together before a
report went about that the usher had dragged a child a long time ago, in
circumstances of extreme peril, out of a swamp or bog, and was the
possessor of a medal for saving life. That was one impression. Later
other details of Doctor Ueberbein's life came to be known, and Klaus
Heinrich too heard of them. It was said that his origin was obscure,
that he had no father, his mother had been an actress who had paid some
poor people to adopt him, and that he had once been starved, which
accounted for the greenish tint of his complexion. These were things
which did not bear being brought into the light or even being thought
of, wild, remote things, to which, however, Doctor Ueberbein himself
sometimes alluded--when, for instance, the lordlings, who could not
forget his obscure origin, behaved impudently or unbecomingly towards
him.

"Suck-a-thumbs and mammy's darlings!" he would say then in loud dudgeon.
"I've knocked about long enough to deserve some respect from you young
gentlemen!" This fact too, that Doctor Ueberbein had "knocked about,"
did not fail of effect on Klaus Heinrich. But the especial charm of the
doctor's person lay in the directness of his attitude towards Klaus
Heinrich, the tone in which he addressed him from the very beginning,
and which distinguished him clearly from everybody else. There was
nothing about him which reminded one of the stiff reticence of the
lackeys, of the governess's pale horror, of Schulrat Dröge's
professional bows, or of Professor Kürtchen's self-satisfied deference.
There was nothing about him to recall the strange, loyal, and yet
impertinent way in which people outside stared at Klaus Heinrich.

During the first few days after the seminary assembled, he kept silence
and confined himself to observation, but then he approached the Prince
with a jovial and cheery frankness, a fresh fatherly camaraderie such as
Klaus Heinrich had never before experienced. It disturbed him at first,
he looked in terror at the doctor's green face; but his confusion found
no echo in the doctor, and in no way discouraged him, it confirmed him
in his hearty bumptious ingenuousness, and it was not long before Klaus
Heinrich was warmed and won, for there was nothing vulgar, nothing
degrading, not even anything designed and school-masterish in Doctor
Ueberbein's methods--all they showed was the superiority of a man who
had knocked about the world, and, at the same time, his tender and open
respect for Klaus Heinrich's different birth and position; they showed
affection and recognition, at the same time as the cheerful offer of a
league between their two different kinds of existence. He called him
"Highness" once or twice, then simply "Prince," then quite simply "Klaus
Heinrich." And he stuck to the last.

When the "Pheasants" went out for a ride, these two rode at the head,
the doctor on his stout piebald to the left of Klaus Heinrich on his
docile chestnut--trotted when snow or leaves were falling, through
springtime thaws or summer heat, along the edge of the woodlands across
country, or through the villages, while Doctor Ueberbein related
anecdotes of his life. Raoul Ueberbein sounds funny, doesn't it? The
very reverse of _chic_. Yes, Ueberbein had been the name of his adoptive
parents, a poor, oldish couple of the inferior bank-clerk class, and he
had a quite legal right to it. But that he should be called Raoul had
been the decision and mandate of his mother, when she handed over the
sum agreed on, together with his fateful little person, to the others--a
sentimental decision obviously, a decision prompted by piety. At least
it was quite possible that his legal and real father had been called
Raoul, and it was to be hoped that his surname had been something which
harmonized with it.

For the rest, it had been rather a wild undertaking on the part of his
adoptive parents to adopt a child, for "Barmecide had been cook" in the
Ueberbein establishment, and it was obvious that it had been only the
most urgent necessity which had made them jump at the money. The boy had
been given only the scantiest of school educations, but he had taken the
liberty of showing what he was made of, had distinguished himself to
some extent, and as he was keen to become a teacher, he had been granted
out of a public fund the means of obtaining a college education. Well,
he had finished his college course not without distinction, as indeed it
was expected of him that he should, and he had then been appointed a
teacher in a public elementary school, with a good salary, out of which
he had managed to give occasional doles by way of gratitude to his
honest adoptive parents, until they died almost simultaneously. And a
happy release it was for them!

And so he had been left alone in the world, his very birth a misfortune,
as poor as a sparrow and endowed by Providence with a green face and
dog's ears by way of personal recommendations. Attractive
qualifications, were they not? But such qualifications were really
favourable ones--once for all, so they proved. A miserable boyhood,
loneliness and exclusion from good fortune and all that good fortune
brings, a never-ceasing, imperious call to be up and doing, no fear of
getting fat and lazy, one's moral fibre was braced, one could never rest
on one's oars, but must be always overhauling and passing others. Could
anything be more stimulating, when the hard facts were brought home to
one? What a handicap over others who "were not obliged to" to the same
extent! People who could smoke cigars in the morning....

At that time, by the bedside of one of his unwashed little pupils, in a
room which did not smell exactly of spring blossoms, Raoul Ueberbein had
made friends with a young man--some years older than he, but in a
similar position and like him ill-fated by birth in so far as he was a
Jew. Klaus Heinrich knew him--indeed, he might be said to have got to
know him on a very intimate occasion. Sammet was his name, a doctor of
medicine; he happened by chance to have been in the Grimmburg when Klaus
Heinrich was born, and had set up a couple of years later in the capital
as a children's doctor. Well, he had been a friend of Ueberbein's, still
was one, and they had had many a good talk about fate and duty. What is
more, they had both knocked about the world.

Ueberbein, for his part, looked back with sincere pleasure to the time
when he had been an elementary teacher. His activities had not been
entirely confined to the class-room, he had amused himself by showing
also some personal and human concern for his charges' welfare, by
visiting them at home, by sharing at times their not too idyllic family
life, and in doing so he did not fail to bring away impressions of a
most varied kind. In truth, if he had not already tasted the bitterness
of the cup of life, he would have had plenty of opportunity then to do
so. For the rest, he had not ceased to work by himself, had given
private lessons to plump tradesmen's sons, and tightened his waist belt
so as to save enough to buy books with--had spent the long, still, and
free nights in study. And one day he had passed the State examination
with exceptional distinction, had soon received his promotion, had been
transferred to a grammar school. As a matter of fact, it had been a sore
grief to him to leave his little charges, but so the fates willed. And
then it had so happened that he had been chosen to be usher at the
"Pheasantry," for all that his very birth had been a misfortune.

                   *       *       *       *       *

That was Doctor Ueberbein's story, and Klaus Heinrich, as he listened to
it, was filled with friendly feelings. He shared his contempt for those
who "weren't obliged to" and smoked cigars in the morning, he felt a
fearful joy when Ueberbein talked in his jolly blustering way about
"knocking about," "impressions," and the bitterness of the cup of life,
and he felt as if he had been personally an actor in the scenes as he
followed his luckless and gallant career from his adoption up to his
appointment as grammar-schoolmaster. He felt as if he were in some
general sort of way qualified to take part in a conversation about fate
and duty. His attitude of reserve relaxed, the experiences of his own
fifteen years of life came crowding in upon him, he felt a longing
himself to retail confidences, and he tried to tell Doctor Ueberbein all
about himself.

But the funny thing was that Doctor Ueberbein himself checked him,
opposed any such intention most decidedly. "No, no, Klaus Heinrich," he
said; "full stop there! No confidences, if you please! Not but that I
know that you have all sorts of things to tell me.... I need only watch
you for half a day to see that, but you quite misunderstand me if you
think I'm likely to encourage you to weep round my neck. In the first
place, sooner or later you'd repent it. But in the second, the pleasures
of a confidential intimacy are not for the likes of you. You see,
there's no harm in my chattering. What am I? An usher. Not a common or
garden one, in my own opinion, but still no better than such. Just a
categorical unit. But you? What are you? That's harder to say.... Let's
say a conception, a kind of ideal. A frame. An emblematical existence,
Klaus Heinrich, and at the same time a formal existence. But formality
and intimacy--haven't you yet learnt that the two are mutually
exclusive? Absolutely exclusive. You have no right to intimate
confidences, and if you attempted them you yourself would discover that
they did not suit you, would find them inadequate and insipid. I must
remind you of your duty, Klaus Heinrich."

Klaus Heinrich laughed and saluted with his crop, and on they rode.

On another occasion Doctor Ueberbein said casually: "Popularity is a not
very profound, but a grand and comprehensive kind of familiarity." And
that was all he said on the subject.

Sometimes in summer, during the long intervals between the morning
lessons, they would sit together in the empty pavilion, or stroll about
the "Pheasants" playground, discussing various topics, and breaking off
to drink lemonade provided by Herr Stavenüter. Herr Stavenüter beamed as
he wiped the rough table and brought the lemonade with his own hands.
The glass ball in the bottle-neck had to be pushed in. "Sound stuff!"
said Herr Stavenüter. "The best that can be got. No muck, Grand Ducal
Highness, and you, doctor, but just sweetened fruit-juice. I can
honestly recommend it!"

Then he made his children sing in honour of the visit. There were three
of them, two girls and a boy, and they could sing trios. They stood some
way off with the green leaves of the chestnut trees for roof, and sang
folk-songs while they blew their noses with their fingers. Once they
sang a song beginning: "We are all but mortal men," and Doctor Ueberbein
took advantage of the pauses to express his disapproval of this number
on the programme. "A paltry song," he said, and leaned over towards
Klaus Heinrich. "A really commonplace song, a lazy song, Klaus Heinrich;
you must not let it appeal to you."

Later, when the children had stopped singing, he returned to the song
and described it as "sloppy." "We are all but mortal men," he repeated.
"God bless us, yes, no doubt we are. But on the other hand we ought
perhaps to remember that it is those of us who count for most who may be
the occasion for especially emphasizing this truth.... Look you," he
said, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other, while he stroked
his beard up from underneath his chin, "look you, Klaus Heinrich, a man
who has my intellectual aspirations will not be able to help searching
for and clinging to whatever is out of the ordinary in this drab world
of ours, wherever and however it appears--he cannot help being put out
by such a slovenly song, by such a sheepish abjuration of the
exceptional, of the lofty and of the miserable, and of that which is
both at once. You may well say: 'That's talking for effect.' I'm only an
usher, but there's something in my blood, Heaven knows what--I can't
find any pleasure in emphasizing the fact that we are all ushers at
bottom. I love the extraordinary in every form and in every sense. I
love those who are conscious of the dignity of their exceptional
station, the marked men, those one can see are not as other men, all
those whom the people stare at open-mouthed--I hope they'll appreciate
their destiny, and I do not wish them to make themselves comfortable
with the slip-shod and luke-warm truth which we have just heard set to
music for three voices. Why have I become your tutor, Klaus Heinrich? I
am a gipsy, a hard-working one, maybe, but still a born gipsy. My
predestination to the rôle of squire of princes is not particularly
obvious. Why did I gladly obey the call when it came to me, in view of
my energy, and although my very birth was a misfortune? Because, Klaus
Heinrich, I see in your existence the clearest, most express, and
best-preserved form of the extraordinary in the world. I have become
your tutor that I might keep your destiny alive in you. Reserve,
etiquette, obligation, duty, demeanour, formality--has the man whose
life is surrounded by these no right to despise others? Ought he to
allow himself to be reminded of humanity and good nature? No, come
along, let's go, Klaus Heinrich, if you don't mind. They're tactless
brats, these little Stavenüters." Klaus Heinrich laughed, he gave the
children some of his pocket-money, and they went.

"Yes, yes," said Doctor Ueberbein in the course of an ordinary walk in
the woods to Klaus Heinrich--they had drifted a little distance away
from the five "Pheasants"--"nowadays the soul's thirst for veneration
has to be satisfied with what it can get. Where will you find greatness?
I only hope you may! But quite apart from all actual greatness and
high-calling, there is always what I call Highness, select and sadly
isolated forms of life, towards which an attitude of the tenderest
sympathy should be adopted. For the rest, greatness is strong, it wears
jack-boots, it has no need of the knight-services of the mind. But
Highness is affecting--damme if it isn't the most affecting thing on
earth."

Once or twice a year the "Pheasantry" journeyed to the capital to attend
performances of classical operas and dramas in the Grand Ducal Court
Theatre; Klaus Heinrich's birthday in particular was the signal for a
visit to the theatre. He would then sit quietly in his carved arm-chair,
leaning against the red plush ledge of the Court box, whose roof rested
on the heads of two female figures with crossed hands and empty stern
faces, and watched his colleagues, the princes, whose destinies were
played out on the stage, while he stood the fire of the opera-glasses
which from time to time, even during the play, were directed at him from
the audience. Professor Kürtchen sat on his left hand and Doctor
Ueberbein with the "Pheasants" in an adjoining box.

Once they heard the "Magic Flute," and on the way home to "Pheasantry"
station, in the first-class carriage, Doctor Ueberbein made the whole
collection of them laugh by imitating the way in which singers talk when
their rôles oblige them to talk in prose. "He is a prince!" he said with
pathos, and answered himself in a drawly, sing-song parsonical voice.
"He is more than that, he is a man!" Even Professor Kürtchen was so much
amused that he bleated.

But next day, in the course of a private lesson in Klaus Heinrich's
study, with the round mahogany table, whitened ceiling, and Greek bust
on the stove, Doctor Ueberbein repeated his parody, and said then:
"Great heavens, that was something new in its time, it was a piece of
news, a startling truth! There are paradoxes which have stood so long on
their heads that one has to put them on their feet to make anything even
moderately daring out of them, 'He is a man. He is more than that'--that
is getting gradually bolder, prettier, even truer. The converse is mere
humanity, but I have no hearty love for humanity, I'm quite content to
leave it out of account. One must, in a certain sense, be one of those
of whom the people say: 'They are, after all, mortal men too'--or one is
as deadly dull as an usher. I cannot honestly wish for the general
comfortable obliteration of conflicts and gulfs, that's the way I am
made, for better or worse, and the idea of the _principe uomo_ is to me,
to speak plainly, an abomination. I am not anxious that it should
particularly appeal to you.... Look you, there have always been princes
and exceptional persons who live their life of exception with a light
heart, simply unconscious of their dignity or denying it outright, and
capable of playing skittles with the townsfolk in their shirt-sleeves,
without the slightest attempt at an inward qualm. But they are not very
important, just as nothing is important which lacks mind. For mind,
Klaus Heinrich, mind is the tutor which insists inexorably on dignity,
indeed actually creates dignity, it is the arch-enemy and chief
antagonist of all human good nature. 'More than that?' No! to be a
representative, to stand for a number when one appears to be the exalted
and refined expression of a multitude. Representing is naturally
something more and higher than simply Being, Klaus Heinrich--and that's
why people call you Highness."

So argued Doctor Ueberbein, in loud, hearty, and fluent terms, and what
he said influenced Klaus Heinrich's mind and susceptibilities more,
perhaps, than was desirable. The prince was then about fifteen years
old, and therefore quite competent, if not properly to understand, yet
to imbibe the essence of ideas of that sort. The main point was that
Doctor Ueberbein's doctrines and apophthegms were so exceptionally
supported by his personality.

When Schulrat Dröge, the man who used to bow to the lackeys, reminded
Klaus Heinrich of his "exalted calling," that was nothing more than an
exaggerated form of speech, devoid of inner meaning and calculated
mainly to add emphasis to his professional claims. But when Doctor
Ueberbein, whose very birth had been a misfortune, as he said, and who
had a green complexion because he had been half starved; when this man
who had dragged a child out of a bog, who had received "impressions" and
"knocked about" in all sorts of ways; when he who not only did not bow
to the lackeys, but who bawled at them in strident tones when the fancy
took him, and who had called Klaus Heinrich himself straight out by his
Christian names when he had known him only three days, without asking
leave to do so,--when he with a paternal laugh declared that Klaus
Heinrich's "path lay among the heights of mankind" (a favourite
expression of his), the effect was a feeling of freedom and originality
which awoke an echo deep down in the prince's soul.

When Klaus Heinrich listened to the doctor's loud and jolly anecdotes of
his life, of the "bitterness of the cup of life," he felt as he used to
when he went rummaging with Ditlinde his sister, and that the man who
could tell such anecdotes, that this "rolling stone," as he called
himself, did not, like the others, adopt a reserved and deferential
attitude towards him, but, without prejudice to a free and cheerful
homage, treated him as a comrade in fate and destiny, warmed Klaus
Heinrich's heart to inexpressible gratitude and completed the charm
which bound him to the usher for ever....

Shortly after his sixteenth birthday (Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, was
at the time in the South for his health) the Prince was confirmed,
together with the five "Pheasants," in the Court Church. The _Courier_
reported the fact without making any sensation of it. Dom Wislezenus,
the President of the High Consistory, treated a Bible text in
counterpoint, this time to the choice of the Grand Duke, and Klaus
Heinrich was on this occasion gazetted a Lieutenant, although he had not
the foggiest notion of things military.... His existence was becoming
more and more barren of _expertise_. The ceremonial of the confirmation
also lacked incisive significance, and the Prince returned immediately
afterwards quietly back to the "Pheasantry" to continue his life amongst
his tutors and schoolfellows without any alteration.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was not till one year later that he left his old-fashioned homely
schoolroom with the torso on the stove; the seminary was broken up, and
while his five noble comrades were transferred to the Corps of Cadets,
Klaus Heinrich again took up his abode in the Old Schloss, intending, in
accordance with an agreement which Herr von Knobelsdorff had come to
with the Grand Duke, to spend a year at the upper gymnasium classes in
the capital. This was a well-calculated and popular step, which however
did not make much difference from the point of view of _expertise_.
Professor Kürtchen had gone back to his post at the public academy, he
instructed Klaus Heinrich as before in several branches of knowledge,
and showed even greater zeal than he had at the seminary, being
determined to let everybody see how tactful he was. It also appeared
that he had told the rest of the staff of the agreement reached with
regard to the two ways in which the Prince should announce his feelings
with regard to answering a question.

As to Doctor Ueberbein, who had also returned to the academy, he had not
yet advanced so far in his unusual career as to teach the highest class.
But at Klaus Heinrich's lively, even insistent request, preferred by him
to the Grand Duke, not by word of mouth but by official channels, so to
speak, through the benevolent Herr von Knobelsdorff, the usher was
appointed tutor and superintendent of home studies, came daily to the
Schloss, bawled at the lackeys, and had every opportunity of working on
the Prince with his intellectual and enthusiastic talk. Perhaps it was
partly the fault of this influence that Klaus Heinrich's relations with
the young people with whom he shared the much-hacked school-benches
continued even looser and more distant than his connexion with the five
at the "Pheasantry"; and if thus the popularity which this year was
intended to secure was not attained, the intervals, which both in summer
and in winter were spent by all the scholars in the roomy paved
courtyard, offered opportunities for camaraderie.

But these intervals, intended to refresh the ordinary scholars, brought
with them for Klaus Heinrich the first actual effort of the kind of
which his life was to be full. He was naturally, at least during the
first term, the cynosure of every eye in the play-ground--no easy matter
for him, in view of the fact that here the surroundings deprived him of
every external support and attribute of dignity, and he was obliged to
play on the same pavement as those whose common idea was to stare at
him. The little boys, full of childlike irresponsibility, hung about
close to him and gaped, while the bigger ones hovered around with
wide-open eyes and looked at him out of the corners of them or from
under their eyelids.... The excitement dwindled in course of time, but
even then--whether the fault was Klaus Heinrich's or the others'--even
later the camaraderie somehow did not make much progress. One might see
the prince, on the right of the head master or the usher-in-charge,
followed and surrounded by the curious, strolling up and down the
courtyard. One could see him, too, chatting with his schoolfellows.

What a charming sight it was! There he leaned, half-sitting on the slope
of the glazed-brick wall, with his feet crossed, and his left hand
thrust far behind on his hips, with the fifteen members of the first
class in a half-circle round him. There were only fifteen this year, for
the last promotions had been made with the object in view that the
select should contain no elements which were unfitted by origin or
personality to be for a year on Christian-name terms with Klaus
Heinrich. For the use of Christian names was ordered. Klaus Heinrich
conversed with one of them, who had advanced a little towards him out of
the semicircle, and answered him with little short bows. Both laughed,
everybody laughed directly they began to talk to Klaus Heinrich. He
asked him for instance: "Have you yet done your German essay for next
Tuesday?"

"No, Prince Klaus Heinrich, not quite yet; I haven't yet done the last
part."

"It's a difficult subject. I haven't any idea yet what to write."

"Oh, your Highness will.... You'll soon think of something!"

"No, it's difficult.... You got an alpha in arithmetic, didn't you?"

"Yes, Prince Klaus Heinrich, I was lucky."

"No, you deserved it. I shall never be able to make anything of it!"

Murmurs of amusement and gratification in the semicircle. Klaus Heinrich
turned to another schoolfellow, and the first stepped quickly back.
Everybody felt that the really important point was not the essay nor the
arithmetic, but the conversation as an event and an undertaking, one's
attitude and tone, the way one advanced or retired, the success with
which one assumed a sympathetic, self-collected, and refined demeanour.
Perhaps it was the consciousness of this which brought the smile to
everybody's lips.

Sometimes, when he had the semicircle in front of him, Klaus Heinrich
would say some such words as "Professor Nicolovius looks an owl."

Great then was the merriment among the others. Such a remark was the
signal for general unbending, they kicked over the traces, "Ho, ho,
ho!" 'd in chorus in their newly cracked voices, and one would declare
Klaus Heinrich to be a "ripping chap." But Klaus Heinrich did not often
say such things, he only said them when he saw the smile on the others'
faces grow faint and wan, and signs of boredom or even of impatience
showing themselves; he said them by way of cheering them up, and at the
extravagant laughter by which they were followed he wore a look half of
curiosity, half of dismay.

It was not Anselm Schickedanz who called him a "ripping chap," and yet
it was directly on his account that Klaus Heinrich had compared
Professor Nicolovius to an owl. Anselm Schickedanz had laughed like the
others at the joke, but not in quite the same approving way, but with an
intonation which implied, "Gracious heavens!" He was a dark boy, with
narrow hips, who enjoyed the reputation throughout the school of being a
devil of a chap. The tone of the top class this year was admirable. The
obligations which membership of Klaus Heinrich's class entailed had been
impressed on every boy from various quarters, and Klaus Heinrich was not
the boy to tempt them to forget these obligations. But that Anselm
Schickedanz was a devil of a chap had often come to his ears, and Klaus
Heinrich, when he looked at him, felt a kind of satisfaction in
believing what he heard, although it was an obscure problem to him how
he could have come by his reputation.

He made several inquiries privately, broached the subject apparently by
chance, and tried to find out from one or other of his comrades
something about Schickedanz's devilry. He discovered nothing definite.
But the answers, whether disparaging or complimentary, filled him with
the suspicion of a mad amiability, an unlawful glorious humanity, which
was there for the eyes of all, save his own, to see--and this suspicion
was almost a sorrow. Everybody said at once, with reference to Anselm
Schickedanz, and in saying it dropped into the forbidden form of
address: "Yes, Highness, you ought to see him when you are not there!"

Klaus Heinrich would never see him when he was not there, would never
get near him, never get to know him. He stole peeps at him when he stood
with the others in a semicircle before him, laughing and braced up like
all the rest. Everybody braced himself up in Klaus Heinrich's presence,
his very existence was accountable for that, as he well knew, and he
would never see what Schickedanz was like, how he behaved when he let
himself go. At the thought he felt a twinge of envy, a tiny spark of
regret.

                   *       *       *       *       *

At this juncture something painful, in fact revolting, occurred, of
which nothing came to the ears of the Grand Ducal couple, because Doctor
Ueberbein kept his mouth closed and about which scarcely any rumour
spread in the capital because everybody who had had a share or any
responsibility in the matter, obviously from a kind of feeling of shame,
preserved strict silence about it. I refer to the improprieties which
occurred in connexion with Prince Klaus Heinrich's presence at that
year's citizens' ball, and in which a Fräulein Unschlitt, daughter of
the wealthy soap-boiler, was especially concerned.

The citizens' ball was a chronic fixture in the social life of the
capital, an official and at the same time informal festivity, which was
given by the city every winter in the "Townpark Hotel," a big, recently
enlarged and renovated establishment in the southern suburbs, and
provided the bourgeois circles with an opportunity of establishing
friendly relations with the Court. It was known that Johann Albrecht III
had never cultivated a taste for this civil and rather free-and-easy
entertainment, at which he appeared in a black frock-coat in order to
lead off the polonaise with the Lady Mayoress, and that he was wont to
withdraw from it at the earliest possible moment. This only heightened
the general satisfaction when his second son, although not yet bound to
do so, already made his appearance at the ball that year--indeed, it
became known that he did so at his own express request. It was said that
the Prince had employed Excellency von Knobelsdorff to transmit his
earnest wish to the Grand Duchess, who in her turn had contrived to
obtain her husband's consent.

Outwardly the festivity pursued its wonted course. The most
distinguished guests, Princess Catherine, in a coloured silk dress and
cap, accompanied by her red-haired children, Prince Lambert with his
pretty wife, and last of all Johann Albrecht and Dorothea with Prince
Klaus Heinrich, made their appearance in the "Townpark Hotel," greeted
by city officials, with long-ribboned rosettes pinned on their coats.
Several Ministers, aides-de-camp in mufti, numbers of men and women of
the Court, the leaders of society, as well as landowners from the
surrounding country, were present. In the big white hall the Grand Ducal
pairs first received a string of presentations, and then, to the strains
of the band which sat in the curved gallery up above, Johann Albrecht
with the Lady Mayoress, Dorothea with the Lord Mayor, opened the ball by
a procession round the room.

Then, while the polonaise gave place to a round dance, contentment
spread, cheeks glowed, the heat of the throng kindled feelings of
fondness, faintness, and foreboding among the dancers, the distinguished
guests stood as distinguished guests are wont to stand on such
occasions--apart and smiling graciously on the platform, at the top of
the hall under the gallery. From time to time Johann Albrecht engaged a
distinguished man, and Dorothea engaged his wife, in conversation. Those
addressed stepped quickly and smartly forward and back, kept their
distance half-bowing with their heads bent, nodded, shook their heads,
laughed in this attitude at the questions and remarks addressed to
them--answered eagerly on the spur of the moment, with sudden and
anticipatory changes from hearty amusement to the deepest earnestness,
with a passionateness which was doubtless unusual to them, and obviously
in a state of tension. Curious guests, still panting from the dance,
stood in a semicircle round and stared at these purposely trivial
conversations with a peculiarly tense expression on their faces.

Klaus Heinrich was the object of much attention. Together with two
red-headed cousins who were already in the army, but were wearing mufti
that evening, he kept a little behind his parents, resting on one leg,
his left hand placed far back on his hip, his face turned with his right
half-profile to the public. A reporter of the _Courier_ who had been
bidden to the ball made notes upon him in a corner. The Prince could be
seen to greet with his white-gloved right hand his tutor, Doctor
Ueberbein, who with his red beard and greenish tint came along the fence
of spectators; he was seen even to advance some way into the hall to
meet him.

The doctor, with big enamel studs in his shirt front, began by bowing
when Klaus Heinrich stretched out his hand to him, but then at once
spoke to him in his free and fatherly way. The Prince seemed to be
rejecting a proposal, and laughed uneasily as he did so, but then a
number of people distinctly heard Doctor Ueberbein say: "No--nonsense,
Klaus Heinrich, what was the good of learning? Why did the Swiss
governess teach you your steps in your tenderest years? I can't
understand why you go to balls if you won't dance? One, two, three,
we'll soon find you a partner!" And with a continual shower of
witticisms he presented to the Prince four or five young maidens, whom
he dropped on without ceremony and dragged forward. They ducked and shot
up again, one after the other, in the trailing fluctuations of the Court
curtsey, set their teeth and did their best. Klaus Heinrich stood with
his heels together and murmured, "Delighted, quite delighted."

To one he went so far as to say: "It's a jolly ball, isn't it?"

"Yes, Grand Ducal Highness, we are having great fun," answered she in a
high chirping voice. She was a tall, rather bony bourgeoise maiden,
dressed in white muslin, with fair wavy hair dressed over a pad, and a
pretty face, a gold chain round her bare neck, the collar-bones of which
showed prominently, and big white hands in mittens. She added: "The
quadrille is coming next. Will your Grand Ducal Highness dance it with
me?"

"I don't know ..." he said. "I really don't know ..."

He looked round. The machinery of the ball was already falling into
geometrical order. Lines were being drawn, squares were forming, couples
came forward and called to _vis-à-vis_. The music had not yet started.

Klaus Heinrich asked his cousins. Yes, they were taking part in the
lancers, they already had their lucky partners on their arms.

Klaus Heinrich was seen to go up behind his mother's red damask chair
and whisper something excitedly to her, whereupon she turned her lovely
neck and passed on the question to her husband, and the Grand Duke
nodded. And then some laughter was caused by the youthful impetuosity
with which the Prince ran down, so as not to miss the beginning of the
square dance.

The reporter of the _Courier_, notebook in one hand and pencil in the
other, peered with neck thrust forward over the hall out of his corner,
so as to make sure whom the Prince was going to engage. It was the fair,
tall girl, with the collar-bones and the big white hands, Fräulein
Unschlitt, the soap-boiler's daughter. She was still standing where
Klaus Heinrich had left her.

"Are you still there?" he said breathlessly.... "May I have the
pleasure? Come along!"

The sets were complete. They wandered about for a while without finding
a place. A man with a ribbon rosette hurried up, seized a pair of young
people by the shoulders and induced them to leave their stand under the
chandelier, that his Grand Ducal Highness might occupy it with Fräulein
Unschlitt. The band had been hesitating, it now struck up, the
prescribed compliments were exchanged, and Klaus Heinrich danced like
the rest of the world.

The doors into the next room stood open. In one of them was a buffet
with flower vases, punch bowls, and dishes of many-coloured cakes. The
dance extended right into this room, two sets were dancing in it. In the
other room some white-covered tables were arrayed, which were still
standing empty.

Klaus Heinrich stepped forwards and backwards, laughed to the others,
stretched out his hand and grasped theirs, and then again seized his
partner's big white hand, put his right arm round the maiden's
muslin-clad waist and revolved with her on their particular patch, while
he kept his left hand, which also wore a little white glove, on his hip.
They laughed and talked as they danced. The Prince made mistakes, forgot
himself, upset figures, and lost his place. "You must keep me straight!"
he said in the confusion. "I'm upsetting everything! Nudge me in the
ribs!" and the others gradually plucked up courage and set him right,
ordered him laughingly hither and thither, even laid their hands on him
and pushed him a little when necessary. The fair damsel with the
collar-bones was particularly zealous in pushing him about.

The spirits of the dancers rose with every figure. Their movements
became freer, their calls bolder, they began to stamp their feet and to
prance as they advanced and retired, while they held each other's hands
and balanced themselves with their arms. Klaus Heinrich too stamped, at
first only by way of signal, but soon more loudly; and as far as the
balancing with the arms was concerned, the fair maiden looked after that
when they advanced together. Also every time she danced facing him she
made an exaggerated scrape before him which much increased the
merriment.

The refreshment room was full of chatter and babble, which attracted
everybody's envious glances. Some one had left his set in the middle of
the dance, purloined a sandwich from the buffet, and was now chewing
away proudly as he swerved and stamped, to the amusement of the rest.

"What cheek!" said the fair maiden. "They don't stand on ceremony!" and
the idea gave her no peace. Before you could look round, she was off,
had dashed lightly and nimbly between the lines of dancers, had seized a
sandwich from the buffet and was back in her place.

Klaus Heinrich was the one who applauded her most heartily. His left
hand was a difficulty, and so he managed without it, while with his
right he beat on the top of his head and doubled up with laughter. Then
he became quieter and rather pale. He was struggling with himself....
The quadrille was nearing its end. What he meant to do he must do
quickly. They had already got to the grand chain.

And as he was already almost too late, he did what he had been
struggling with himself about. He broke away, ran swiftly through the
dancers, with muttered apologies when he collided with anybody, reached
the buffet, seized a sandwich, rushed back, and came sliding into his
set; that was not all, he put the sandwich--it was an egg and sardine
one--to the lips of his partner, the damsel with the big white hands;
she curtseyed a little, bit into it, bit almost half off without using
her hands, and throwing back his head he stuffed the rest into his
mouth!

The high spirits of the set found a vent in the grand chain, which was
just beginning. Right round the hall went the dancers, winding zig-zag
in and out and stretching out their hands. Then it stopped, the tide
turned, and once more the stream went round, laughing and chattering,
with mistakes and entanglements and hurriedly rectified complications.

Klaus Heinrich pressed the hands he grasped without knowing to whom they
belonged. He laughed and his chest heaved. His smoothly parted hair was
ruffled, and a bit fell over his forehead, his shirt-front bulged a
little out of his waistcoat, and in his face and sparkling eyes was that
look of tender emotion which is sometimes the expression of happiness.
He said several times during the chain, "What awful fun! What glorious
fun!" He met his cousins, and to them too he said, "We have had such
fun--in our set over there!"

Then came the clapping and au revoirs; the dance was over. Klaus
Heinrich again stood facing the fair maiden with the collar-bones, and
when the music changed time he once more put his arm round her tender
waist, and away they danced.

Klaus Heinrich did not steer well and often knocked into other couples,
because he kept his left hand planted on his hip, but he brought his
partner somehow or other to the entrance to the refreshment room, where
they called a halt and refreshed themselves with pineappleade which was
handed to them by the waiters. They sat just at the entrance on two
velvet stools, drank and chatted about the quadrille, the Citizens'
Ball, and other social functions in which the fair maiden had already
taken part that winter....

It was then that one of the suite, Major von Platow, the Grand Duke's
aide-de-camp, came up to Klaus Heinrich, bowed and begged leave to
announce that their Royal Highnesses were now going. He had been charged
... But Klaus Heinrich gave him to understand that he wished to remain,
in so emphatic a fashion that the aide-de-camp did not like to insist
upon his errand.

The Prince uttered exclamations of an almost rebellious regret and was
obviously bitterly grieved at the idea of going home at once. "We are
having such fun!" he said, stood up and gripped the Major's arm gently.
"Dear Major von Platow, please do intercede for me! Talk to Excellency
von Knobelsdorff, do anything you like--but to go now, when we are all
having such fun together! I'm sure my cousins are going to stay...." The
Major looked at the fair maiden with the big white hands, who smiled at
him; he too smiled and promised to do his best. This little scene was
enacted while the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess were already taking
leave of the city dignitaries at the entrance into the town park.
Immediately afterwards the dancing on the first floor began again.

The ball was at its height. Everything official had gone, and the king
of revelry came into his own. The white-covered tables in the adjoining
rooms were occupied by families drinking punch and eating supper. Youth
streamed to and fro, sitting excitedly and impatiently on the edges of
the chairs to eat a mouthful, drink a glass, and again plunge into the
merry throng. On the ground-floor there was an old-German beer-cellar,
which was crowded with the more sedate men. The big dancing-hall and the
buffet-room were by now monopolized by the dancers. The buffet-room was
filled with fifteen or sixteen young people, sons and daughters of the
city, among them Klaus Heinrich. It was a kind of private ball in there.
They danced to the music which floated in from the main hall.

Doctor Ueberbein, the Prince's tutor, was seen there for a minute or
two, having a short talk with his pupil. He was heard to mention, watch
in hand, Herr von Knobelsdorff's name, and to say that he was down in
the beer-cellar and was coming back to take the Prince away. Then he
went. The time was half-past ten. And while he sat below and conversed
with his friends over a tankard of beer, only for an hour or perhaps an
hour and a half, not more, those dreadful things, that simply incredible
scandal, happened in the buffet-room, to which it fell to him to put a
stop, though unfortunately too late.

The punch provided was weak, it contained more soda-water than
champagne, and if the young people lost their equilibrium it was more
the intoxication of the dance than of the wine. But in view of the
Prince's character and the solid bourgeois origin of the rest of the
company, that was not enough to explain what happened. Another, a
peculiar intoxication, was a factor here on both sides. The peculiar
thing was that Klaus Heinrich was fully conscious of each separate stage
in this intoxication, and yet had not the power or the will to shake it
off.

He was happy. He felt on his cheeks the same glow burning as he saw in
the faces of the others, and as his eyes, dazed by a soft mist,
travelled about the room, and rested admiringly on one fair form after
another, his look seemed to say: "We!" His mouth too said it--said, for
the pure joy of saying them, sentences in which a "We" occurred. "Shall
_we_ sit down? shall _we_ have another turn? shall _we_ have a drink?
shall _we_ make up two sets?" It was especially to the maiden with the
collar-bones that Klaus Heinrich made remarks with a "We" in them. He
had quite forgotten his left hand, it hung down, he felt so happy that
it did not worry him and he never thought of hiding it. Many saw now for
the first time what really was the matter with it, and looked curiously
on with an unconscious grimace at the thin, short arm in the sleeve, the
little, by now rather dirty white kid glove which covered the hand. But
as Klaus Heinrich was so careless about it, the others plucked up
courage, the result being that everybody took hold of the malformed hand
quite unconcernedly in the round or square dances.

He did not keep it back. He felt himself borne along, nay rather whirled
around by a feeling, a strong, wild feeling of contentment, that grew,
gathered heat from itself, possessed itself of him more and more
recklessly, overpowered him even more vehemently and breathlessly,
seemed to lift him triumphantly from the floor. What was happening? It
was difficult to say, difficult to be quite sure. The air was full of
words, detached cries, not spoken but expressed on the dancers' faces,
in their attitudes, in all they were doing and saying. "He must just
once! Bring him along, bring him along ...! Caught, caught!" A young
damsel with a turned-up nose, who asked him for a gallop when the
"leap-year" dance came, said quite clearly without any obvious
connexion, "Chucker up!" as she got ready to start off with him.

He saw pleasure in every eye, and saw that their pleasure lay in drawing
him out, in having him amongst them. In his happiness, his dream, to be
with them, amongst them, one of them, there obtruded itself from time to
time a cold, uncomfortable feeling that he was deluding himself, that
the warm, glorious "We" was deceiving him, that he did not really blend
in with them, that he was all the time the centre and object of the
show, but in a different and more unsatisfactory way than before. They
were his enemies to a certain extent, he saw it in the malice of their
eyes. He heard as if at a distance, with a peculiar dismay, how the fair
damsel with the big white hands called him simply by his names--and he
felt that she did so in quite a different spirit to that of Doctor
Ueberbein when he did the same. She had the right and the permission to
do so, in a certain manner, but was nobody here then jealous for his
dignity, if he himself was not? It seemed to him that they plucked at
his coat, and sometimes in their excitement made wild, sneering remarks
about him. A tall, fair young man with pince-nez, with whom he collided
while dancing, said quite loud so that everybody could hear it: "Now
then, clumsy!" And there was malice in the way in which the fair young
maiden, her arm in his and a grin on her lips, whirled round with him
till he was ready to drop with giddiness. While they whirled he gazed
with swimming eyes at the collar-bones showing under the white, rather
rough skin on her neck.

They fell; they had gone too hard at it and tumbled when they tried to
stop revolving, and over them stumbled a second pair, not entirely by
themselves, but rather at a push from the tall young man with pince-nez.
There was a scrimmage on the floor, and Klaus Heinrich heard above him
in the room the chorus which came back to him from the school-playground
when he had ventured on a rather daring joke by way of amusing his
fellows--a "Ho, ho, ho!" only it sounded more wicked and bolder here....

When shortly after midnight, unfortunately a little behind time, Doctor
Ueberbein appeared on the threshold of the buffet-room, this is what he
saw: His young pupil was sitting alone on the green plush sofa by the
left-hand wall, his clothes all disarranged and himself decorated in an
extraordinary way. A quantity of flowers, which had previously adorned
the buffet in two Chinese vases, were stuck in the opening of his
waistcoat, between the studs of his shirtfront, even in his collar;
round his neck lay the gold chain which belonged to the maiden with the
collar-bones, and on his head the flat metal cover of a punch-bowl was
balanced like a hat. He kept saying, "What are you doing? What are you
doing ...?" while the dancers, hand-in-hand in a semicircle, danced a
round dance backwards and forwards in front of him with half-suppressed
giggles, whispers, smirks, and ho, ho, ho's.

An unusual and unnatural flush mantled in Doctor Ueberbein's face. "Stop
it! Stop it!" he cried in his resonant voice, and, in the silence,
consternation, and dismay which at once ensued, he walked with long
strides up to the Prince, tore away the flowers in two or three grasps,
threw the chain and the cover away, then bowed and said with a stern
look, "May I beg your Grand Ducal Highness ...

"I've been an ass, an ass!" he repeated when he got outside.

Klaus Heinrich left the Citizens' Ball in his company.

That was the painful event which happened during Klaus Heinrich's year
at school. As I have said, none of the participators talked about it;
even to the Prince, Doctor Ueberbein did not mention the subject for
years afterwards, and, as nobody crystallized the event in words, it
remained incorporeal and promptly faded away, at least apparently, into
oblivion.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The Citizens' Ball had taken place in January. Shrove Tuesday, with the
Court Ball and the big Court in the Old Schloss, which wound up the
social year--regulation festivities, to which Klaus Heinrich was not yet
admitted--were past and over. Then came Easter, and with it the close of
the school year. Klaus Heinrich's diploma examination, that edifying
formality, in the course of which the question, "You agree, do you not,
Grand Ducal Highness?" was constantly recurring on the lips of the
Professor, and at which the Prince acquitted himself admirably in his
very conspicuous position. This was not a very important phase in his
life. Klaus Heinrich continued to live in the capital, but after
Whitsuntide his eighteenth birthday drew near, and with it a complex of
festivities which marked a serious turning-point in his life, and which
taxed him severely for days together.

He had attained his majority, had been pronounced to be of age. For the
first time again since his baptism, he was the centre of attention and
chief actor in a great ceremony, but while he had then quietly,
irresponsibly, and patiently resigned himself to the formalities which
surrounded and protected him, it was incumbent on him on this day, in
the midst of binding prescriptions and stern regulations, hemmed in by
the drapery of weighty precedent, to inspire the spectators and to
please them by maintaining an attitude of dignity and good-breeding, and
at the same time to appear light-hearted.

It may be added that I use the word "drapery" not only as a figure of
speech. The Prince wore a crimson mantle on this occasion, a sumptuous
and theatrical article of raiment, which his father and grandfather
before him had worn at their coming-of-age, and which notwithstanding
days of airing, still smelt of camphor. The crimson mantle had
originally belonged to the robes of the Knights of the Grimmburg
Griffin, but was now nothing more than a ceremonial garb for the use of
princes attaining their majority. Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, had never
worn the family one. As his birthday fell in the winter, he always spent
it in the South, in a place with a warm and dry climate, whither he was
thinking of returning this autumn too, and as at the time of his
eighteenth birthday his health had not permitted him to travel home, it
had been decided to declare him officially of age in his absence, and to
dispense with the Court ceremony.

As to Klaus Heinrich, there was only one opinion, especially among the
representatives of the public, that the mantle suited him admirably, and
he himself, notwithstanding the way in which it hampered his movements,
found it a blessing, as it made it easy for him to hide his left hand.
Between the canopied bed and the bellying chest of drawers in his
bedroom, that was situated on the second floor looking out on the yard
with the rose-bush, he made himself ready for the show, carefully and
precisely, with the help of his valet, Neumann, a quiet and precise man
who had been recently attached to him as keeper of his wardrobe and
personal servant.

Neumann was an ex-barber, and was filled, especially in the direction of
his original calling, with that passionate conscientiousness, that
insatiable knowledge of the ideal, which gives rise to the highest
skill. He did not shave like any ordinary shaver, he was not content to
leave no stubble behind, he shaved in such a way that every shadow of a
beard, every recollection of one, was removed, and without hurting the
skin he managed to restore to it all its softness and smoothness. He cut
Klaus Heinrich's hair exactly square above the ears, and arranged it
with all the assiduity required, in his opinion, by this preparation for
the Prince's ceremonial appearance. He managed that the parting should
come over the left eye and run slanting back over the crown of the head,
so that no tufts or wisps should stick up on it; he brushed the hair on
the right side up from the forehead into a prim crest on which no hat or
helmet could make an impression. Then Klaus Heinrich, with his help,
squeezed himself carefully into his uniform of lieutenant in the
Grenadier Guards, whose high-braided collar and tight fit favoured a
dignified bearing, put on the lemon-coloured silk band and the flat gold
chain of the House Order, and went down to the picture gallery where the
members of the family and the foreign relations of the Grand Ducal pair
were waiting. The Court was waiting in the adjoining Hall of the
Knights, and it was there that Johann Albrecht himself invested his son
with the crimson mantle.

Herr von Bühl zu Bühl had marshalled a procession, the ceremonial
procession from the Hall of the Knights to the Throne-room. It had cost
him no little worry. The composition of the Court made it difficult to
contrive an impressive arrangement, and Herr von Bühl especially
lamented the lack of upper Court officials, which on such occasions made
itself most severely felt. The Royal Mews had recently been put under
Herr von Bühl, and he felt himself quite up to his various functions,
but he asked everybody how he could be expected to make a good
impression, when the most important posts were filled simply by the
master of the Buck-hounds, von Stieglitz, and the director of the Grand
Ducal Theatre, a gouty general.

While he, in his capacity as Lord Marshal, Chief Master of the
Ceremonies, and House Marshal, in his embroidered clothes and brown
toupée, covered with orders and with his golden pince-nez on his nose,
came waddling and planting his long staff in front of him behind the
cadets, who, dressed as pages, and their hair parted over the left eye,
opened the procession, he pondered deeply over what came behind him. A
few chamberlains--not many, for some were wanted for the end of the
procession--their plumed hats under their arms and the Key on their
coat-tails, followed close at his heels, in silk stockings. Next came
Herr von Stieglitz, and the limping theatre-director in front of Klaus
Heinrich, who, in his mantle between the exalted couple, and followed by
his brother and sister, Albrecht and Ditlinde, formed the actual nucleus
of the procession.

Behind their Highnesses came von Knobelsdorff, the House Minister and
President of Council, his eye-wrinkles all at work; a little knot of
aides-de-camp and palace ladies came next: General Count Schmettern and
Major von Platow, a Count Trümmerhauff, cousin of the Keeper of the
Privy Purse, as military aide-de-camp of the Heir Apparent, and the
Grand Duchess's women led by the short-winded Baroness von
Schulenburg-Tressen. Then followed, attended and followed by
aides-de-camp, chamberlains, and Court ladies, Princess Catherine, with
her red-haired progeny, Prince Lambert with his lovely wife, and the
foreign relations or their representatives. Pages brought up the rear.

Thus they went at a measured pace from the Hall of the Knights through
the Gala Halls, the Hall of the Twelve Months, and the Marble Hall into
the Throne-room. Lackeys, with red-gold aiguillettes on their brown
coats, stood theatrically in couples at the open double doors. Through
the broad windows the June morning sun streamed gaily and recklessly in.

Klaus Heinrich looked round him as he processed between his parents
through the dreary arabesques, the dilapidated decorations of the
show-rooms, now not favoured by kindly artificial light. The bright
daylight cheerfully and soberly showed up their decay. From the big
lustres with their stiff-bound stems, stripped of their coverings in
honour of the day, rose thick forests of flameless candles, but
everywhere there were prisms missing, crystal festoons torn, so that
they gave a canker-bit and toothless impression. The silk damask
upholstery of the State furniture, which was arranged stiffly and
monotonously round the walls, was thread-bare, the gilt of the frames
chipped off, big blind patches marred the surfaces of the tall
candle-decked mirrors, and daylight shone through the moth-holes in the
faded and discoloured curtains. The gold and silver borders of the
tapestry hangings had torn away in several places, and were hanging
disconsolately from the walls. Even in the Silver Hall of the Gala
Rooms, where the Grand Duke was wont to receive solemn deputations, and
in the centre of which stood a mother-of-pearl table with stumpy silver
feet, a piece of the silver work had fallen from the ceiling leaving a
gaping patch of white plaster.

But why was it that it somehow seemed as if these rooms defied the
sober, mocking daylight, and proudly answered its challenge? Klaus
Heinrich looked sideways at his father.... The condition of the rooms
did not seem to worry him. Never of more than medium height, the Grand
Duke had become almost small in the course of years, but he strode
majestically on with head thrown back, the lemon-coloured ribbon of the
Order over his general's uniform, which he had donned to-day, though he
had no military leanings. From under his high and bald forehead and grey
eyebrows, his blue eyes, with dull rings round them, were fixed with
weary dignity on the distance, and from his pointed white moustaches the
two deep furrows ran down his yellowish skin to his beard, imparting to
his face a look of contempt. No, the bright daylight could not do any
harm to the rooms; the dilapidations did not in the least impair their
dignity, they rather increased it. They stood in their discomfort, their
theatrical symmetry, their strange musty play-house or church
atmosphere, cold and indifferent to the merry and sun-bathed world
outside--stern background of a pompous cult, at which Klaus Heinrich
this day for the first time officiated.

The procession passed through the pairs of lackeys, who, with an
expression of relentlessness, pressed their lips together and closed
their eyes, into the white and gold expanse of the Throne-room. A wave
of acts of homage, scrapings, bows, curtseys and salutes, swept through
the hall as the procession passed in front of the assembled guests.
There were diplomats with their wives, nobility of the Court and the
country, the corps of officers of the capital, the Ministers, amongst
whom could be descried the affected, confident face of the new Finance
Minister, Dr. Krippenreuther, the Knights of the Great Order of the
Grimmburg Griffin, the Presidents of the Diet, dignitaries of all kinds.
High up in the little box above the big looking-glass by the entrance
door could be descried the press representatives peering over each
other's shoulders and busily writing in their notebooks.... In front of
the throne-baldachin, itself a torn velvet arrangement, crowned with
ostrich feathers and framed with gold fillets which would have been all
the better for a touch-up, the procession divided as in a polonaise, and
went through carefully prescribed evolutions.

The pages and chamberlains fell aside to

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