Chapter II: Part 2

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.