Chapter III: Part 3

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.