CHAPTER IX

The Rose-Bush 328

PRELUDE

The scene is the Albrechtstrasse, the main artery of the capital, which

runs from Albrechtsplatz and the Old Schloss to the barracks of the

Fusiliers of the Guard. The time is noon on an ordinary week-day; the

season of the year does not matter. The weather is fair to moderate. It

is not raining, but the sky is not clear; it is a uniform light grey,

uninteresting and sombre, and the street lies in a dull and sober light

which robs it of all mystery, all individuality. There is a moderate

amount of traffic, without much noise and crowd, corresponding to the

not over-busy character of the town. Tram-cars glide past, a cab or two

rolls by, along the pavement stroll a few residents, colourless folk,

passers-by, the public--"people."

Two officers, their hands in the slanting pockets of their grey

great-coats, approach each other; a general and a lieutenant. The

general is coming from the Schloss, the lieutenant from the direction of

the barracks. The lieutenant is quite young, a mere stripling, little

more than a child. He has narrow shoulders, dark hair, and the wide

cheek-bones so common in this part of the world, blue rather

tired-looking eyes, and a boyish face with a kind but reserved

expression. The general has snow-white hair, is tall and

broad-shouldered, altogether a commanding figure. His eyebrows look like

cotton-wool, and his moustache hangs right down over his mouth and chin.

He walks with slow deliberation, his sword rattles on the asphalt, his

plume flutters in the wind, and at every step he takes the big red lapel

of his coat flaps slowly up and down.

And so these two draw near each other. Can this rencontre lead to any

complication? Impossible. Every observer can foresee the course this

meeting will naturally take. We have on one side and the other age and

youth, authority and obedience, years of services and docile

apprenticeship--a mighty hierarchical gulf, rules and prescriptions,

separate the two. Natural organization, take thy course! And, instead,

what happens? Instead, the following surprising, painful, delightful,

and topsy-turvy scene occurs.

The general, noticing the young lieutenant's approach, alters his

bearing in a surprising manner. He draws himself up, yet at the same

time seems to get smaller. He tones down with a jerk, so to speak, the

splendour of his appearance, stops the clatter of his sword, and, while

his face assumes a cross and embarrassed expression, he obviously cannot

make up his mind where to turn his eyes, and tries to conceal the fact

by staring from under his cotton-wool eyebrows at the asphalt straight

in front of him.

The young lieutenant too betrays to the careful observer some slight

embarrassment, which however, strange to say, he seems to succeed,

better than the grey-haired general, in cloaking with a certain grace

and self-command. The tension of his mouth is relaxed into a smile at

once modest and genial, and his eyes are directed with a quiet and

self-possessed calm, seemingly without an effort, over the general's

shoulder and beyond.

By now they have come within three paces of each other. And, instead of

the prescribed salute, the young lieutenant throws his head slightly

back, at the same time draws his right hand--only his right, mark

you--out of his coat-pocket and makes with this same white-gloved right

hand a little encouraging and condescending movement, just opening the

fingers with palm upwards, nothing more. But the general, who has

awaited this sign with his arms to his sides, raises his hand to his

helmet, steps aside, bows, making a half-circle as if to leave the

pavement free, and deferentially greets the lieutenant with reddening

cheeks and honest modest eyes. Thereupon the lieutenant, his hand to his

cap, answers the respectful greeting of his superior officer--answers it

with a look of child-like friendliness; answers it--and goes on his way.

A miracle! A freak of fancy! He goes on his way. People look at him, but

he looks at nobody, looks straight ahead through the crowd, with

something of the air of a woman who knows that she is being looked at.

People greet him; he returns the greeting, heartily and yet distantly.

He seems not to walk very easily; it looks as if he were not much

accustomed to the use of his legs, or as if the general attention he

excites bothers him, so irregular and hesitating is his gait; indeed, at

times he seems to limp. A policeman springs to attention, a smart woman,

coming out of a shop, smiles and curtseys. People turn round to look at

him, nudge each other, stare at him, and softly whisper his name....

It is Klaus Heinrich, the younger brother of Albrecht II, and heir

presumptive to the throne. There he goes, he is still in view. Known and

yet a stranger, he moves among the crowd--people all around him, and yet

as if alone. He goes on his lonely way and carries on his narrow

shoulders the burden of his Highness!

I

THE CONSTRICTION

Artillery salvos were fired when the various new-fangled means of

communication in the capital spread the news that the Grand Duchess

Dorothea had given birth to a prince for the second time at Grimmburg.

Seventy-two rounds resounded through the town and surrounding country,

fired by the military in the walls of the "Citadel." Directly afterwards

the fire brigade also, not to be outdone, fired with the town

salute-guns; but in their firing there were long pauses between each

round, which caused much merriment among the populace.

The Grimmburg looked down from the top of a woody hill on the

picturesque little town of the same name, which mirrored its grey

sloping roofs in the river which flowed past it. It could be reached

from the capital in half an hour by a local railway which paid no

dividends. There the castle stood, the proud creation of the Margrave

Klaus Grimmbart, the founder of the reigning house in the dim mists of

history, since then several times rejuvenated and repaired, fitted with

the comforts of the changing times, always kept in a habitable state and

held in peculiar honour as the ancestral seat of the ruling house, the

cradle of the dynasty. For it was a rule and tradition of the house that

all direct descendants of the Margrave, every child of the reigning

couple, must be born there.

This tradition could not be ignored. The country had had sophisticated

and unbelieving sovereigns, who had laughed at it, and yet had complied

with it with a shrug of the shoulders. It was now much too late to break

away from it whether it was reasonable and enlightened or not: why,

without any particular necessity, break with an honoured custom, which

had managed somehow to perpetuate itself? The people were convinced that

there was something in it. Twice in the course of fifteen generations

had children of reigning sovereigns, owing to some chance or other,

first seen the light in other schlosses: each had come to an unnatural

and disgraceful end. But all the sovereigns of the land and their

brothers and sisters, from Henry the Confessor and John the Headstrong,

with their lovely and proud sisters, down to Albrecht, the father of the

Grand Duke, and the Grand Duke himself, Johann Albrecht III, had been

brought into the world in the castle; and there, six years before,

Dorothea had given birth to her firstborn, the Heir Apparent.

The castle was also a retreat as dignified as it was peaceful. The

coolness of its rooms, the shady charms of its surroundings, made it

preferable as a summer residence to the stiff Hollerbrunn. The ascent

from the town, up a rather badly paved street between shabby cottages

and a scrubby wall, through massive gates to the ancient ruin at the

entrance to the castle-yard, in the middle of which stood the statue of

Klaus Grimmbart, the founder, was picturesque but tiring. But a noble

park spread at the back of the castle hill, through which easy paths led

up into the wooded and gently-swelling uplands, offering ideal

opportunities for carriage drives and quiet strolls.

As for the inside of the castle, it had been last subjected at the

beginning of the reign of Johann Albrecht III to a thorough clean-up and

redecoration--at a cost which had evoked much comment. The furniture of

the living-rooms had been completed and renewed in a style at once

baronial and comfortable; the escutcheons in the "Hall of Justice" had

been carefully restored to their original pattern. The gilding of the

intricate patterns on the vaulted ceilings looked fresh and cheerful,

all the rooms had been fitted with parquet, and both the larger and the

smaller banqueting-halls had been adorned with huge wall-paintings from

the brush of Professor von Lindemann, a distinguished Academician,

representing scenes from the history of the reigning House executed in a

clear and smooth style which was far removed from and quite unaffected

by the restless tendencies of modern schools. Nothing was wanting. As

the old chimneys of the castle and its many-coloured stoves, reaching

tier upon tier right up to the ceiling, were no longer fit to use,

anthracite stoves had been installed in view of the possibility of the

place being used as a residence during the winter.

But the day of the seventy-two salvos fell in the best time of the year,

late spring, early summer, the beginning of June, soon after

Whitsuntide. Johann Albrecht, who had been early informed by telegram

that the labour had begun just before dawn, reached Grimmburg Station by

the bankrupt local railway at eight o'clock, where he was greeted with

congratulations by three or four dignitaries, the mayor, the judge, the

rector, and the town physician. He at once drove to the castle. The

Grand Duke was accompanied by Minister of State, Dr. Baron Knobelsdorff,

and Adjutant-General of Infantry, Count Schmettern. Shortly afterwards

two or three more ministers arrived at the royal residence, the Court

Chaplin Dom Wislezenus, President of the High Consistory, one or two

Court officials, and a still younger Adjutant, Captain von Lichterloh.

Although the Grand Duke's Physician-in-Ordinary, Surgeon-General Dr.

Eschrich, was attending the mother, Johann Albrecht had been seized with

the whim of requiring the young local doctor, a Doctor Sammet, who was

of Jewish extraction into the bargain, to accompany him to the castle.

The unassuming, hard-working, and earnest man, who had as much as he

could do and was not in the least expecting any such distinction,

stammered "Quite delighted ... quite delighted" several times over, thus

provoking some amusement.

The Grand Duchess's bedroom was the "Bride-chamber," a five-cornered,

brightly painted room on the first floor, through whose window a fine

view could be obtained of woods, hills, and the windings of the river.

It was decorated with a frieze of medallion-shaped portraits, likenesses

of royal brides who had slept there in the olden days of the family

history.

There lay Dorothea; a broad piece of webbing was tied round the foot of

her bed, to which she clung like a child playing at horses, while

convulsions shook her lovely frame. Doctor Gnadebusch, the midwife, a

gentle and learned woman with small fine hands and brown eyes, which

wore a look of mystery behind her round, thick spectacles, was

supporting the Duchess, while she said:

"Steady, steady, your Royal Highness.... It will soon be over. It's

quite easy.... Just once more ... that's nothing.... Rest a bit: knees

apart.... Keep your chin down...."

A nurse, dressed like her in white linen, helped too, and moved

lightly about with phials and bandages during the pauses. The

Physician-in-Ordinary, a gloomy man with a greyish beard, whose left

eyelid seemed to droop, superintended the birth. He wore his

operating-coat over his surgeon-general's uniform. From time to time

there peeped into the room, to ascertain the progress of the confinement,

Dorothea's trusty Mistress of the Robes, Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen,

a corpulent and asthmatic woman of distinctly dragoon-like

appearance, who nevertheless liked to display a generous

expanse of neck and shoulders at the court balls. She kissed her

mistress's hand and went back to an adjoining room, in which a couple of

thin ladies-in-waiting were chatting with the Grand Duchess's

Chamberlain-in-Waiting, a Count Windisch. Dr. Sammet, who had thrown his

linen coat like a domino over his dress-coat, was waiting modestly and

attentively by the washstand.

Johann Albrecht sat in a neighbouring room used as a study, which was

separated from the "Bride-chamber" only by a so-called powder closet and

a passage-room. It was called the library, in view of several manuscript

folios, which lay slanting in the massive book-shelves and contained the

history of the castle. The room was furnished as a writing-room. Globes

adorned the walls. The strong wind from the hills blew through the open

bow-window. The Grand Duke had ordered tea, and the groom of the

chamber, Prahl, had himself brought the tray; but it was standing

forgotten on the leaf of the desk, and Johann Albrecht was pacing the

room from one corner to the other in a restless, uncomfortable frame of

mind. His top-boots kept creaking as he walked. His aide-de-camp, von

Lichterloh, listened to the noise, as he waited patiently in the almost

bare passage-room.

The Minister, the Adjutant-General, the Court Chaplain, and the Court

officials, nine or ten in all, were waiting in the state-room on the

ground floor. They wandered through the larger and the smaller

banqueting-halls, where trophies of banners and weapons hung between

Lindemann's pictures. They leaned against the slender pillars, which

spread into brightly coloured vaulting above their heads. They stood

before the narrow, ceiling-high windows, and looked out through the

leaded panes over river and town; they sat on the stone benches which

ran round the walls, or on seats before the stoves, whose Gothic tops

were supported by ridiculous little stooping imps of stone. The bright

sunlight made the gold lace on the uniforms, the orders on the padded

chests, the broad gold stripes on the trousers of the dignitaries

glisten.

The conversation flagged. Three-cornered hats and white-gloved hands

were constantly being raised to mouths which opened convulsively. Nearly

everybody had tears in his eyes. Several had not had time to get any

breakfast. Some sought entertainment in a timid examination of the

operating-instruments and the round leather-cased chloroform jar, which

Surgeon-General Eschrich had left there in case of emergency. After von

Bühl zu Bühl, the Lord Marshal, a powerful man with mincing manners,

brown toupée, gold-rimmed pince-nez, and long, yellow fingernails, had

told several anecdotes in his quick, jerky way, he dropped into an

armchair, in which he made use of his gift of being able to sleep with

his eyes open--of losing consciousness of time and place while retaining

a steady gaze and alert attitude, and in no way imperilling the dignity

of the situation.

Dr. von Schröder, Minister of Finance and Agriculture, had had a

conversation earlier in the day with the Minister of State, Dr. Baron

Knobelsdorff, Minister of Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and the Grand

Ducal Household. It was a spasmodic chat, which began with a discussion

on art, went on to financial and economic questions, alluded, somewhat

disapprovingly, to a High Court official, and did not leave even the

most exalted personages out of account. It began with the two men

standing, with their hats in their hands behind their backs, in front of

one of the pictures in the larger banqueting-hall, each of them thinking

more than he said. The Finance Minister said: "And this? What's this?

What's happening? Your Excellency is so well informed."

"Merely superficially. It is the investiture of two Grand princes of the

blood by their uncle, the Emperor. As your Excellency can see, the two

young men are kneeling and taking the oath with great solemnity on the

Emperor's sword."

"Fine, extraordinarily fine! What colouring! Dazzling. What lovely

golden hair the princes have! And the Emperor ... exactly as he is

described in the books! Yes, that Lindemann well deserves all the

distinctions which have been given him."

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

Dr. von Schröder, a tall man with a white beard, a pair of thin gold

spectacles on his white nose, a belly protruding slightly underneath his

stomach, and a bull-neck, which lapped over the stiff collar of his

coat, looked, without taking his eyes off the picture, somewhat

doubtfully at it, under the influence of a diffidence which seized him

from time to time during conversations with the baron. This

Knobelsdorff, this favourite and exalted functionary, was so

enigmatical. At times his remarks, his retorts, had an indefinable tinge

of irony about them. He was a widely travelled man, he had been all over

the world, he had so much general knowledge, and interests of such a

strange and exotic kind. And yet he was a model of correctness. Herr von

Schröder could not quite understand him. However much one agreed with

him, it was impossible to feel that one really understood him. His

opinions were full of a mysterious reserve, his judgments of a tolerance

which left one wondering whether they implied approval or contempt.

But the most suspicious thing about him was his laugh, a laugh of the

eyes in which the mouth took no part, a laugh which seemed to be

produced by the wrinkles radiating from the corners of his eyes, or vice

versa to have produced those same wrinkles in the course of years. Baron

Knobelsdorff was younger than the Finance Minister; he was then in the

prime of life, although his close-trimmed moustache and hair smoothly

parted in the middle were already beginning to turn grey--for the rest a

squat, short-necked man, obviously pinched by the collar of his

heavily-laced court dress. He left Herr von Schröder to his perplexity

for a minute, and then went on: "Only perhaps it might be to the

interests of a prudent administration of the Privy Purse if the

distinguished professor had rested content with stars and titles ... to

speak bluntly, what may all these delightful works of art have cost?"

Herr von Schröder recovered his animation. The desire, the hope of

understanding the Baron, of getting on to intimate and confidential

terms with him, excited him. "Just what I was thinking!" said he,

turning round to resume his walk through the galleries. "Your Excellency

has taken the question out of my mouth. I wonder what this 'Investiture'

cost, and all the rest of these wall-pictures. For the restoration of

the castle six years ago cost a million altogether."

"At least that."

"A solid million! And that amount was audited and approved by Lord

Marshal von Bühl zu Bühl, who is sitting yonder in a state of

comfortable catalepsy--audited, approved, and disbursed by the Keeper of

the Privy Purse, Count Trümmerhauff."

"Disbursed, or owing!"

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

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

"Your Excellency knows as well as I what that means. No, it makes me run

cold.... I swear I am neither a skin-flint nor a hypochondriac, but it

makes me run cold when I think of a man, with present conditions staring

him in the face, coolly throwing a million away--on what? On a nothing,

a pretty whim, on the beautification of the family schloss in which his

babies have to be born...."

Herr von Knobelsdorff laughed. "Yes, Heaven knows romance is a luxury,

and a mighty expensive one too! Excellency, I agree with you--of course.

But consider, after all the whole trouble in the Grand Ducal finances is

due to this same romantic luxury. The root of the evil lies in the fact

that the ruling dynasty are farmers; their capital consists in land and

soil, their income in agricultural profits. At the present day.... They

have not been able up to the present to make up their minds to turn into

industrialists and financiers. They allow themselves with regrettable

obstinacy to be swayed by certain obsolete and idealistic conceptions,

such as, for instance, the conceptions of trust and dignity. The royal

property is hampered by a trust entailed in fact. Advantageous

alienations are barred. Mortgages, the raising of capital on credit for

commercial improvements, seem to them improper. The administration is

seriously hindered in the free exploitation of business

opportunities--by ideas of dignity. You'll forgive me, won't you? I'm

telling you the absolute truth. People who pay so much attention to

propriety as these of course cannot and will not keep pace with the

freer and less hampered initiative of less obstinate and unpractical

business people. Now then, what, in comparison with this negative

luxury, does the positive million signify, which has been sacrificed to

a pretty whim, to borrow your Excellency's expression? If it only

stopped there! But we have the regular expenses of a fairly dignified

Court to meet. There are the schlosses and their parks to keep up,

Hollerbrunn, Monbrillant, Jägerpreis, aren't there? The Hermitage,

Delphinenort, the Pheasantry, and the others.... I had forgotten Schloss

Zegenhaus and the Haderstein ruins ... not to mention the Old

Schloss.... They are not well kept up, but they all cost money.... There

are the Court Theatre, the Picture Gallery, the Library, to maintain.

There are a hundred pensions to pay,--no legal compulsion to pay them,

but motives of trust and dignity. And look at the princely way in which

the Grand Duke behaved at the time of the last floods.... But I'm

preaching you a regular sermon!"

"A sermon," said the Minister of Finance, "which your Excellency thought

would shock me, while you really only confirmed my own view. Dear

Baron"--here Herr von Schröder laid his hand on his heart,--"I am

convinced that there is no longer room for any misunderstanding as to my

opinion, my loyal opinion, between you and me. The King can do no

wrong.... The sovereign is beyond the reach of reproaches. But here we

have to do with a default ... in both senses of the word!... a default

which I have no hesitation in laying at the door of Count Trümmerhauff.

His predecessors may be pardoned for having concealed from their

sovereigns the true state of the Court finances; in those days nothing

else was expected of them. But Count Trümmerhauff's attitude now is not

pardonable. In his position as Keeper of the Privy Purse he ought to

have felt it incumbent on him to put a brake on his Highness's

thoughtlessness, to feel it incumbent on him now to open his Royal

Highness's eyes relentlessly to the facts ..."

Herr Knobelsdorff knitted his brows and laughed.

"Really?" said he. "So your Excellency is of the opinion that that is

what the Count was appointed for! I can picture to myself the

justifiable astonishment of his lordship, if you lay before him your

view of the position. No, no ... your Excellency need be under no

delusion; that appointment was a quite deliberate expression of his

wishes on the part of his Royal Highness, which the Count must be the

first to respect. It expressed not only an 'I don't know,' but also an

'I won't know.' A man may be an exclusively decorative personality and

yet be acute enough to grasp this.... Besides ... honestly ... we've all

of us grasped it. And the only grain of comfort for all of us is this:

that there isn't a prince alive to whom it would be more fatal to

mention his debts than to his Royal Highness. Our Prince has a something

about him which would stop any tactless remarks of that sort before they

were spoken ..."

"Quite true, quite true," said Herr von Schröder. He sighed and stroked

thoughtfully the swansdown trimming of his hat. The two men were

sitting, half turned towards each other, on a raised window seat in a

roomy niche, past which a narrow stone corridor ran outside, a kind of

gallery, through the pointed arches of which peeps of the town could be

seen. Herr von Schröder went on:

"You answer me, Baron; one would think you were contradicting me, and

yet your words show more incredulity and bitterness than my own."

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

"It may be so," said the Finance Minister, and nodded gloomily at his

hat. "Your Excellency may be quite right. Perhaps we are all

blameworthy, we and our forefathers too. But it ought to have been

stopped. For consider, Baron; ten years ago an opportunity offered

itself of putting the finances of the Court on a sound footing, on a

better footing anyhow, if you like. It was lost. We understand each

other. The Grand Duke, attractive man that he is, had it then in his

power to clear things up by a marriage which from a sound point of view

might have been called dazzling. Instead of that ... speaking not for

myself, of course, but I shall never forget the disgust on everybody's

faces when they mentioned the amount of the dowry..."

"The Grand Duchess," said Herr von Knobelsdorff, and the wrinkles at the

corners of his eyes disappeared almost entirely, "is one of the

handsomest women I have ever seen."

"That is an answer one would expect of your Excellency. It's an æsthetic

answer, an answer which would have held quite as good if his Royal

Highness's choice, like his brother Lambert's, had fallen on a member of

the royal ballet."

"Oh, there was no danger of that. The Prince's taste is a fastidious

one, as he has shown. He has always shown in his wants the antithesis to

that want of taste which Prince Lambert has shown all his life. It was a

long time before he made up his mind to marry. Everybody had given up

all hope of a direct heir to the throne. They were resigned for better

or worse to Prince Lambert, whose ... unsuitability to be heir to the

throne we need not discuss. Then, a few weeks after he had succeeded,

Johann Albrecht met Princess Dorothea, cried, "This one or none!" and

the Grand Duchy had its sovereign lady. Your Excellency mentioned the

thoughtful looks which were exchanged when the figures of the dowry were

published,--you did not mention the jubilation which at the same time

prevailed. A poor princess, to be sure. But is beauty, such beauty, a

power of happiness or not? Never shall I forget her entry! Her first

smile, as it lighted on the gazing crowds, won their love. Your

Excellency must allow me to profess once more my belief in the idealism

of the people. The people want to see their best, their highest, their

dream, what stands for their soul, represented in their princes--not

their money bags. There are others to represent those...."

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

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

with an Heir Apparent."

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

"I agree."

At this point the conversation between the two Ministers ceased. It was

broken off by the announcement by aide-de-camp von Lichterloh, of the

happy issue of the confinement. The smaller banqueting-hall was soon

filled with officials. One of the great carved doors was quickly thrown

open, and the aide-de-camp appeared in the hall. He had a red face, blue

soldier's eyes, a bristling flaxen moustache, and silver lace on his

collar. He looked somewhat excited, like a man who had been released

from deadly boredom and was primed with good news. Conscious of the

unusualness of the occasion, he boldly ignored the rules of decorum and

etiquette. He saluted the company gaily, and, spreading his elbows,

raised the hilt of his sword almost to his breast crying: "Beg leave to

announce: a prince!"

"Good!" said Adjutant-General Count Schmettern.

"Delightful, quite delightful, I call that perfectly delightful!" said

Lord Marshal von Bühl zu Bühl in his jerky way; he had recovered

consciousness at once.

The President of the High Consistory, Dom Wislezenus--a clean-shaven,

well-built man, who, as a son of a general, and thanks to his personal

distinction, had attained to his high dignity at a comparatively early

age, and on whose black silk gown hung the star of an Order--folded his

white hands on his breast, and said in a melodious voice, "God bless his

Grand Ducal Highness!"

"You forget, Captain," said Herr von Knobelsdorff, laughing, "that in

making your announcement you are encroaching on my privileges and

province. Until I have made the most searching investigations into the

state of affairs, the question whether it is a prince or a princess

remains undecided."

The others laughed, and Herr von Lichterloh replied: "As you wish, your

Excellency! Then I have the honour to beg your Excellency to assume this

most important charge...."

This dialogue referred to the attributes of the Minister of State, as

registrar of the Grand Ducal house, in which capacity he was required to

satisfy himself with his own eyes of the sex of the princely offspring

and to make an official declaration on the subject. Herr von

Knobelsdorff complied with this formality in the so-called powder-closet

in which the new-born babe was bathed. He stayed longer there, however,

than he had intended to, as he was puzzled and arrested by a painful

sight, which at first he mentioned to nobody except the midwife.

Doctor Gnadebusch showed him the child, and her eyes, gleaming

mysteriously behind her thick spectacles, travelled between the Minister

of State and the little copper-coloured creature, as it groped about

with one--only one--little hand, as if she was saying: "Is it all

right?"

It was all right. Herr von Knobelsdorff was satisfied, and the wise

woman wrapped the child up again. But even then she continued to look

down at the Prince and then up at the Baron, until she had drawn his

eyes to the point to which she wished to attract them. The wrinkles at

the corners of his eyes disappeared, he knit his brows, tried, compared,

felt, examined for two or three minutes, and at last asked: "Has the

Grand Duke yet seen it?"

"No, Excellency."

"When the Grand Duke sees it," said Herr von Knobelsdorff, "tell him

that he will grow out of it."

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

But ten or fifteen minutes after him the Grand Duke also made the

disagreeable discovery,--that was unavoidable, and resulted for

Surgeon-General Eschrich in a short, extremely unpleasant scene, but for

the Grimmburg Doctor Sammet in an interview with the Grand Duke which

raised him considerably in the latter's estimation and was useful to him

in his subsequent career. What happened was briefly as follows:

After the birth Johann Albrecht had again retired to the library, and

then returned to sit for some time at the bedside with his wife's hand

in his. Thereupon he went into the "powder-closet," where the infant now

lay in his high, richly gilded cradle, half covered with a blue silk

curtain, and sat down in an armchair by the side of his little son. But

while he sat and watched the sleeping infant it happened that he noticed

what it was hoped that he would not notice yet. He drew the counterpane

back, his face clouded over, and then he did exactly what Herr von

Knobelsdorff had done before him, looked from Doctor Gnadebusch to the

nurse and back again, both of whom said nothing, cast one glance at the

half-open door into the bride-chamber, and stalked excitedly back into

the library.

Here he at once rang the silver eagle-topped bell which stood on the

writing-table, and said to Herr von Lichterloh, who came in, very curtly

and coldly: "I require Herr Eschrich."

When the Grand Duke was angry with any member of his suite, he was wont

to strip the culprit for the moment of all his titles and dignities, and

to leave him nothing but his bare name.

The aide-de-camp again clapped his spurs and heels together and

withdrew. Johann Albrecht strode once or twice in a rage up and down the

room, and then, hearing Herr von Lichterloh bring the person he had

summoned into the ante-room, adopted an audience attitude at his

writing-table.

As he stood there, his head turned imperiously in half-profile, his left

hand planted on his hip, drawing back his satin-fronted frock coat from

his white waistcoat, he exactly resembled his portrait by Professor von

Lindemann, which hung beside the big looking-glass over the mantelpiece

in the "Hall of the Twelve Months" in the Town Schloss, opposite the

portrait of Dorothea, and of which countless engravings, photographs,

and picture postcards had been published. The only difference was that

Johann Albrecht in the portrait seemed to be of heroic stature, while he

really was scarcely of medium height. His forehead was high where his

hair had receded, and from under his grey eyebrows, his blue eyes looked

out, with dark rings round them, giving them an expression of tired

haughtiness. He had the broad, rather too high cheek-bones which were a

characteristic of his people. His whiskers and the soft tuft on his chin

were grey, his moustache almost white. From the distended nostrils of

his small but well-arched nose, two unusually deep furrows ran down to

his chin. The lemon-coloured ribbon of the Family Order always showed in

the opening of his waistcoat. In his buttonhole the Grand Duke wore a

carnation.

Surgeon-General Eschrich entered with a low bow. He had taken off his

operating-coat. His eyelid drooped more heavily than usual over his eye.

He looked apprehensive and uncomfortable.

The Grand Duke, his left hand on his hip, threw his head back, stretched

out his right hand and waved it, palm upwards, several times up and down

impatiently.

"I am awaiting an explanation, a justification, Surgeon-General," said

he, with a voice trembling with irritation. "You will have the goodness

to answer my questions. What is the matter with the child's arm?"

The Physician-in-Ordinary raised his hand a little--a feeble gesture of

impotence and blamelessness. He said:

"An it please Your Royal Highness.... An unfortunate occurrence.

Unfavourable circumstances during the pregnancy of her Royal

Highness...."

"That's all nonsense!" The Grand Duke was so much excited that he did

not wish for any justification, in fact he would not allow one. "I would

remind you, sir, that I am beside myself. Unfortunate occurrence! It was

your business to take precautions against unfortunate occurrences...."

The Surgeon-General stood with half-bowed head and, sinking his voice to

a submissive tone, addressed the ground at his feet.

"I humbly beg to be allowed to remind you that I, at least, am not alone

responsible. Privy Councillor Grasanger--an authority on

gynæcology--examined her Royal Highness. But nobody can be held

responsible in this case...."

"Nobody ... Really! I permit myself to make you responsible.... You are

answerable to me.... You were in charge during the pregnancy, you

superintended the confinement. I have relied on the knowledge to be

expected from your rank, Surgeon-General, I have trusted to your

experience. I am bitterly disappointed, bitterly disappointed. All that

your skill can boast of is ... that a crippled child has been born...."

"Would your Royal Highness graciously weigh ..."

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

Surgeon-General Eschrich retired backwards, bowing. In the ante-room he

shrugged his shoulders, while his cheeks glowed.

The Grand Duke again fell to pacing the library in his princely wrath,

unreasonable, misinformed, and foolish in his loneliness. However,

whether it was that he wished to humiliate the Physician-in-Ordinary

still further, or that he regretted having robbed himself of any

explanations--ten minutes later the unexpected happened, and the Grand

Duke sent Herr von Lichterloh to summon young Doctor Sammet to the

library.

The doctor, when he received the message, again said: "Quite delighted

... quite delighted, ..." and at first changed colour a little, then

composed himself admirably. It is true that he was not a complete master

of the prescribed etiquette, and bowed too soon, while he was still in

the door, so that the aide-de-camp could not close it behind him, and

had to ask him in a whisper to move forward; but afterwards he stood in

an easy and unconstrained attitude, and gave reassuring answers,

although he showed that he was naturally rather slow of speech,

beginning his sentences with hesitating noises and frequently

interspersing them with a "Yes," as if to confirm what he was saying. He

wore his dark yellow hair cut _en brosse_ and his moustache untrimmed.

His chin and cheeks were clean-shaved, and rather sore from it. He

carried his head a little on one side, and the gaze of his grey eyes

told of shrewdness and practical goodness. His nose, which was too broad

at the bottom, pointed to his origin. He wore a black tie, and his shiny

boots were of a country cut. He kept his elbows close to his side, with

one hand on his silver watch-chain. His whole appearance suggested

candour and professional skill; it inspired confidence.

The Grand Duke addressed him unusually graciously, rather in the manner

of a teacher who has been scolding a naughty boy, and turns to another

with a sudden assumption of mildness.

"I have sent for you, doctor.... I want information from you about this

peculiarity in the body of the new-born prince.... I assume that it has

not escaped your notice.... I am confronted with a riddle ... an

extremely painful riddle.... In a word, I desire your opinion." And the

Grand Duke, changing his position, ended with a gracious motion of the

hand, which encouraged the doctor to speak.

Dr. Sammet looked at him silently and attentively, as if waiting till

the Grand Duke had completely regained his princely composure. Then he

said: "Yes; we have here to do with a case which is not of very common

occurrence, but which is well known and familiar to us. Yes. It is

actually a case of atrophy ..."

"Excuse me ... atrophy ...?"

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

"I see, stunted growth. Stunting. That's it. The left hand is stunted.

But it's unheard of! I cannot understand it! Such a thing has never

happened in my family! People talk nowadays about heredity."

Again the doctor looked silently and attentively at the lonely and

domineering man, to whom the news had only just penetrated that people

were talking lately about heredity. He answered simply: "Pardon me,

Royal Highness, but in this case there can be no question of heredity."

"Really! You're quite sure!" said the Grand Duke rather mockingly. "That

is one satisfaction. But will you be so kind as to tell me what there

can be a question of, then."

"With pleasure, Royal Highness. The cause of the malformation is

entirely a mechanical one. It has been caused through a mechanical

constriction during the development of the embryo. We call such

malformations constriction-formations, yes."

The Grand Duke listened with anxious disgust; he obviously feared the

effect of each succeeding word on his sensitiveness. He kept his brows

knit and his mouth open: the two furrows running down to his beard

seemed deeper than ever. He said: "Constriction-formations, ... but how

in the world ... I am quite sure every precaution must have been

taken ..."

"Constriction-formations," answered Dr. Sammet, "can occur in various

ways. But we can say with comparative certainty that in our case ... in

this case it is the amnion which is to blame."

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

"That is one of the foetal membranes, Royal Highness. Yes. And in

certain circumstances the removal of this membrane from the embryo may

be retarded and proceed so slowly that threads and cords are left

stretching from one to the other ... amniotic threads as we call them,

yes. These threads may be dangerous, for they can bind and knot

themselves round the whole of a child's limb; they can entirely

intercept, for instance, the life-ducts of a hand and even amputate it.

Yes."

"Great heavens ... amputate it. So we must be thankful that it has not

come to an amputation of the hand?"

"That might have happened. Yes. But all that has happened is an

unfastening, resulting in an atrophy."

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

"No, Royal Highness. Absolutely not. It is quite certain that no blame

whatever attaches to anybody. Such constrictions do their work in

secret. We are powerless against them. Yes."

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

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

"It will never be quite normal, certainly not," he said cautiously. "But

the stunted hand will grow a little larger than it is at present, oh

yes, it assuredly will ..."

"Will he be able to use it? For instance ... to hold his reins or to

make gestures, like any one else?..."

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

that's all right."

"Will it be very obvious?" asked the Grand Duke, and scanned Dr.

Sammet's face earnestly. "Very noticeable? Will it detract much from his

general appearance, think you?"

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

greater disadvantages. Yes."

The Grand Duke turned away, and walked once up and down the room. Dr.

Sammet deferentially made way for him, and withdrew towards the door. At

last the Grand Duke resumed his position at the writing-table and said:

"I have now heard what I wanted to know, doctor; I thank you for your

report. You understand your business, no doubt about that. Why do you

live in Grimmburg? Why do you not practise in the capital?"

"I am still young, Royal Highness, and before I devote myself to

practising as a specialist in the capital I should like a few years of

really varied practice, of general experience and research. A country

town like Grimmburg affords the best opportunity of that. Yes."

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

later on?"

"In the diseases of children, Royal Highness. I intend to be a

children's doctor, yes."

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

screwing up his eyes.

"Yes, Royal Highness."

"Ah--will you answer me one more question? Have you ever found your

origin to stand in your way, a drawback in your professional career? I

ask as a ruler, who is especially concerned that the principle of 'equal

chances for all' shall hold good unconditionally and privately, not only

officially."

"Everybody in the Grand Duchy," answered Dr. Sammet, "has the right to

work." But he did not stop there: moving his elbows like a pair of short

wings, in an awkward, impassioned way, he made a few hesitating noises,

and then added in a restrained but eager voice: "No principle of

equalization, if I may be allowed to remark, will ever prevent the

incidence in the life of the community of exceptional and abnormal men

who are distinguished from the bourgeois by their nobleness or infamy.

It is the duty of the individual not to concern himself as to the

precise nature of the distinction between him and the common herd, but

to see what is the essential in that distinction and to recognize that

it imposes on him an exceptional obligation towards society. A man is at

an advantage, not at a disadvantage, compared with the regular and

therefore complacent majority, if he has one motive more than they to

extraordinary exertions. Yes, yes," repeated Dr. Sammet. The double

affirmative was meant to confirm his answer.

"Good ... not bad; very remarkable, anyhow," said the Grand Duke

judicially. He found Dr. Sammet's words suggestive, though somewhat off

the point. He dismissed the young man with the words: "Well, doctor, my

time is limited. I thank you. This interview--apart from its painful

occasion--has much reassured me. I have the pleasure of bestowing on you

the Albrecht Cross of the Third Class with Crown. I shall remember you.

Thank you."

This was what passed between the Grimmburg doctor and the Grand Duke.

Shortly after Johann Albrecht left the castle and returned by special

train to the capital, chiefly to show himself to the rejoicing populace,

but also in order to give several audiences in the palace. It was

arranged that he should return in the evening to the castle, and take up

his residence there for the next few weeks.

All those present at the confinement at Grimmburg who did not belong to

the Grand Duchess's suite were also accommodated in the special train of

the bankrupt local railway, some of them travelling in the Sovereign's

own saloon. But the Grand Duke drove from the castle to the station

alone with von Knobelsdorff, the Minister of State, in an open landau,

one of the brown Court carriages with the little golden crown on the

door. The white feathers in the hats of the chasseurs in front fluttered

in the summer breeze. Johann Albrecht was grave and silent on the

journey; he seemed to be worried and morose. And although Herr von

Knobelsdorff knew that the Grand Duke, even in private, disliked anybody

addressing him unasked and uninvited, yet at last he made up his mind to

break the silence.

"Your Royal Highness," he said deprecatingly, "seems to take so much to

heart the little anomaly which has been discovered in the Prince's body,

... and yet one would think that on a day like this the reasons for joy

and proud thankfulness so far outweigh ..."

"My dear Knobelsdorff," replied Johann Albrecht, with some irritation

and almost in tears, "you must forgive my ill-humour; you surely do not

wish me to be in good spirits. I can see no reason for being so. The

Grand Duchess is going on well--true enough, and the child is a

boy--that's a blessing too. But he has come into the world with an

atrophy, a constriction, caused by amniotic threads. Nobody is to blame,

it is a misfortune; but misfortunes for which nobody is to blame are the

most terrible of all misfortunes, and the sight of their Sovereign ought

to awaken in his people other feelings than those of sympathy. The Heir

Apparent is delicate, needs constant care. It was a miracle that he

survived that attack of pleurisy two years ago, and it will be nothing

less than a miracle if he lives to attain his majority. Now Heaven

grants me a second son--he seems strong, but he comes into the world

with only one hand. The other is stunted, useless, a deformity, he will

have to hide it. What a drawback! What an impediment! He will have to

brave it out before the world all his life. We must let it gradually

leak out, so that it may not cause too much of a shock on his first

appearance in public. No, I cannot yet get over it. A prince with one

hand ..."

"'With one hand,'" said Herr von Knobelsdorff. "Did your Royal Highness

use that expression twice deliberately?"

"Deliberately?"

"You did not, then?... For the Prince has two hands, yet as one is

stunted, one might if one liked also describe him as a prince with one

hand."

"What then?"

"And one must almost wish, not that your Royal Highness's second son,

but that the heir to the throne were the victim of this small

malformation."

"What do you mean by that?"

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

gipsy woman."

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

"Of the gipsy woman--forgive me!--who a hundred years ago prophesied the

birth of a Prince to your Royal Highness's house--a prince 'with one

hand'--that is how tradition puts it--and attached to the birth of that

prince a certain promise, couched in peculiar terms."

The Grand Duke turned on his seat and stared, without saying a word, at

Herr von Knobelsdorff, at the outer corner of whose eyes the radiating

wrinkles were playing. Then, "Mighty entertaining!" he said, and resumed

his former attitude.

"Prophecies," continued Herr von Knobelsdorff, "generally come true to

this extent, that circumstances arise which one can interpret, if one

has a mind to, in their sense. And the broadness of the terms in which

every proper prophecy is couched makes this all the more easy. 'With one

hand'--that is regular oracle-style. What has actually happened is a

moderate case of atrophy. But that much counts for a good deal, for what

is there to prevent me, what is there to prevent the people, from

assuming the whole by this partial fulfilment, and declaring that the

conditional part of the prophecy has been fulfilled? The people will do

so; if not at once, at any rate if the rest of the prophecy, the actual

promise, is in any way realised, it will put two and two together, as it

always has done, in its wish to see what is written turn out true. I

don't see how it is going to come about--the Prince is a younger son, he

will not come to the throne, the intentions of fate are obscure. But the

one-handed prince is there--and so may he bestow on us as much as he

can."

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

of his dynasty.

"Well, Knobelsdorff, I will not be angry with you. You want to comfort

me, and you have not done it badly. But I must do what is expected of

me...."

The air resounded with the distant cheers of many voices. The people of

Grimmburg were crowded in black masses behind the cordon at the station.

Officials were standing apart in front, waiting for the carriages. There

was the mayor, raising his top-hat, wiping his forehead with a crumpled

handkerchief, and poring over a paper whose contents he was committing

to memory. Johann Albrecht assumed the expression appropriate to

listening to the smoothly worded address and to answering concisely and

graciously:

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

bells were ringing.

In the capital all the bells were ringing. And in the evening there were

illuminations; not by formal request of the authorities, but

spontaneous--the whole city was a blaze of light.

II

THE COUNTRY

The country measured eight thousand square kilometres, and numbered one

million inhabitants.

A pretty, quiet, leisurely country. The tops of the trees in its forests

rustled dreamily; its broad acres showed signs of honest care; its

industries were undeveloped to the point of indigence.

It possessed some brick-kilns, a few salt and silver-mines--that was

almost all. A certain amount of tourist-traffic must also be mentioned,

but he would be a bold man who described it as a flourishing industry.

The alkali springs, which rose from the ground in the immediate

neighbourhood of the capital and formed the centre of an attractive

bathing-establishment, constituted the claims of the city to be

considered a health resort. But while the baths at the end of the Middle

Ages had been frequented by visitors from afar, they had later lost

their repute, and been put in the shade by other baths and forgotten.

The most valuable of the springs, that called the Ditlinde spring, which

was exceptionally rich in lithium salts, had been opened up quite

recently, in the reign of Johann Albrecht III, and as energetic business

and advertising methods were not employed, its water had not yet

succeeded in winning world-recognition. A hundred thousand bottles of it

were sent away in the year--rather less than more. And but few strangers

came to drink it on the spot....

The Diet was the scene all the year round of speeches about the "barely"

satisfactory results of the trade returns, by which was really meant the

entirely unsatisfactory results, which nobody could dispute, that the

local railways did not cover their expenses and the main lines did not

pay any dividends--distressing but unalterable and inveterate facts,

which the Minister for Trade in luminous but monotonous declarations

explained by the peaceful commercial and industrial circumstances of the

country, as well as by the inaccessibility of the home coal-deposits.

Critics added something about defective organization of the State

industrial administration. But the spirit of contradiction and negation

was not strong in the Diet; the prevailing frame of mind among the

representatives of the people was one of dull and true-hearted loyalty.

So the railway revenues did not by any means rank first among the public

revenues of a private-investment nature; the forest revenues had ranked

first for years in this land of woods and plough. The fall in them,

their startling depreciation, however sufficient reasons there were for

it, was a much more difficult matter to mend.

The people loved their woods. They were a fair and compact type, with

searching blue eyes and broad, rather high cheek-bones, a sensible and

honest, solid and backward stamp of men. They clung to their country's

forest with all the strength of their nature; it lived in their bones,

it was to the artists which it bred the source and home of their

inspirations, and it was quite properly the object of popular gratitude,

not only in regard to the gifts of soul and intellect of which it was

the donor. The poor gathered their firewood in the forest; it gave to

them freely, they had it for nothing. They went stooping and gathering

all kinds of berries and mushrooms among its trunks, and earned a little

something by doing so. That was not all. The people recognized that

their forest had a very distinctly favourable influence on the weather

and the healthy condition of the country; they were well aware that

without the lovely woods in the neighbourhood of the capital the

spa-garden outside would not attract foreigners with money to spend; in

short, this not over-industrious and up-to-date people could not help

knowing that the forest stood for the most important asset, the most

profitable heritage of the country.

And yet the forest had been sinned against, outraged for ages and ages.

The Grand Ducal Department of Woods and Forests deserved all the

reproaches that were laid against it. That Department had not political

insight enough to see that the wood must be maintained and kept as

inalienable common property, if it was to be useful not only to the

present generation, but also to those to come; and that it would surely

avenge itself if it were exploited recklessly and short-sightedly,

without regard to the future, for the benefit of the present.

That was what happened, and was still happening. In the first place

great stretches of the floor of the forest had been impoverished by

reckless and excessive spoliation of its litter. Matters had repeatedly

gone so far that not only the most recent carpet of needles and leaves,

but the greatest part of the fall of years past had been removed and

used in the fields partly as litter, partly as mould. There were many

forests which had been completely stripped of mould; some had been

crippled by the raking away of the litter: instances of this were to be

found in the public woodlands as well as in the State woodlands.

If the woods had been put to these uses in order to tide over a sudden

agricultural crisis, there would have been no reason to complain. But

although there were not wanting those who declared that an agricultural

system founded on the appropriation of wood-litter was inexpedient,

indeed dangerous, the trade in litter went on without any particular

reason, on purely fiscal grounds, so it was put--that is to say, on

grounds which, examined closely, proved to be only one ground and

object, namely, the making of money. For it was money which was wanted.

But to get this money, ceaseless inroads were made on the capital, until

one fine day it was realised with dismay that an unsuspected

depreciation in that capital had ensued.

The people were a peasant race, and thought that the way to be

up-to-date was to display a perverted, artificial, and improper zeal and

to employ reckless business methods. A characteristic instance was the

dairy-farming ... one word about that. Loud complaints were heard,

principally in the official medical annual, that a deterioration was

noticeable in the nourishment, and consequently in the development, of

the country people. What was the reason? The owners of cows were bent on

turning all the full-milk at their disposal into money. The spread of

the dairy industry, the development and productiveness of the milk

trade, tempted them to disregard the claims of their own establishments.

A strength-giving milk diet became a rarity in the country, and in its

stead recourse was had to unsubstantial skimmed milk, inferior

substitutes, vegetable oils, and, unfortunately, alcoholic drinks as

well. The critics talked about under-feeding, they even called it

physical and moral debilitation of the population; they brought the

facts to the notice of the Diet, and the Government promised to give the

matter their earnest attention.

But it was only too clear that the Government was at bottom infected

with the same perversity as the mistaken dairy-farmers. Timber continued

to be cut to excess in the State forests; once cut it was gone, and

meant a continual shrinkage of public property. The clearings might have

been necessary occasionally, when the forests had been damaged in one

way or another, but often enough they had been due simply to the fiscal

reasons referred to: and instead of the proceeds of the clearings being

used for the purchase of new tracts, instead of the cleared tracts being

replanted as quickly as possible--instead, in a word, of the damage to

the capital value of the State forests being balanced by an addition to

their capital value, the quickly earned profits had been devoted to the

payment of current expenses and the redemption of bonds. Of course there

could be no doubt that a reduction of the National Debt was only too

desirable; but the critics expressed the opinion that that was not the

time to devote extraordinary revenues to the building up of the

sinking-fund.

Anybody who had no interest in mincing matters must have described the

State finances as in a hopeless muddle. The country carried a debt of

thirty million pounds--it struggled along under it with patience and

devotion, but with secret groans. For the burden, much too heavy in

itself, was made trebly heavy through a rise in the rate of interest and

through conditions of repayment such as are usually imposed on a country

whose credit is shaken, whose exchange is low, and which has already

almost come to be reckoned as "interesting" in the world of financiers.

The succession of financial crises appeared to be never-ending. The list

of failures seemed without beginning or end. And a maladministration,

which was made no better by frequent changes in its personnel, regarded

borrowing as the only cure for the creeping sickness in the State

finances. Even the Chancellor of the Exchequer, von Schröder, whose

probity and singleness of purpose were beyond all doubt, had been given

a peerage by the Grand Duke, because he had succeeded in placing a loan

at a high rate of interest in the most difficult circumstances. His

heart was set on an improvement in the credit of the State: but as his

resource was to contract new debts while he paid off the old, his policy

proved to be no better than a well-meant but costly blind. For a

simultaneous sale and purchase of bonds meant a higher purchase than

selling price, involving the loss of thousands of pounds.

It seemed as if the country were incapable of producing a man of any

adequate financial gifts. Improper practices and a policy of

"hushing-up" were the fashion. The budget was so drawn up that it was

impossible to distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary State

requirements. Ordinary and extraordinary items were jumbled up together,

and those responsible for the budgets deceived themselves, and everybody

else, as to the real state of affairs, by appropriating loans, which

were supposed to be raised for extraordinary purposes, to cover a

deficit in the ordinary exchequer.... The holder of the finance

portfolio at one time was actually an ex-court marshal.

Dr. Krippenreuther, who took the helm towards the end of Johann

Albrecht III's reign, was the Minister who, convinced like Herr von

Schröder of the necessity for a strenuous reduction in the debt, induced

the Diet to consent to a final and extreme addition to the burden of

taxation. But the country, naturally poor as it was, was on the verge of

insolvency, and all Krippenreuther got was unpopularity. His policy

really meant merely a transfer from one hand to the other, a transfer

which itself involved a loss; for the increase in taxation laid a burden

on the national economy which pressed more heavily and more directly

than that which was removed by the sinking of the National Debt.

Where, then, were help and a remedy to be found? A miracle, so it

seemed, was needed--and meanwhile the sternest economy. The people were

pious and loyal, they loved their princes as themselves, they were

permeated with the sublimity of the monarchical idea, they saw in it a

reflexion of the Deity. But the economical pressure was too painful, too

generally felt. The most ignorant could read in the thinned and crippled

forests a tale of woe. The consequence was that repeated appeals had

been made in the Diet for a curtailment of the Civil List, a cutting

down of the appanages and Crown endowments.

The Civil List amounted to twenty-five thousand pounds, the revenues of

the Crown demesnes to thirty-seven thousand pounds. That was all. And

the Crown was in debt--to what extent was perhaps known to Count

Trümmerhauff, the Keeper of the Grand Ducal Purse, a regular stickler,

but a man of absolutely no business instincts. It was not known to

Johann Albrecht; at any rate he seemed not to know it, and therein

followed the example of his forefathers, who had rarely deigned to give

more than a passing thought to their debts.

The people's attitude of veneration was reflected in their princes'

extraordinary sense of their own dignity, which had sometimes assumed

fanciful and even extravagant forms, and had found its most obvious and

most serious expression in every period in a tendency to extravagance

and to a reckless ostentation as exaggerated as the dignity it

represented. One Grimmburger had been christened "the luxurious" in so

many words,--they had almost all deserved the nickname. So that the

state of indebtedness of the House was an historical and hereditary

state, reaching back to the times when all loans were a private concern

of the Sovereign, and when John the Headstrong, wishing to raise a loan,

pledged the liberty of the most prominent of his subjects to do so.

Those times were past; and Johann Albrecht III, a true-born Grimmburger

in his instincts, was unfortunately no longer in a position to give free

rein to his instincts. His fathers had played ducks and drakes with the

family funds, which were reduced to nothing or little better than

nothing. They had been spent on the building of country-seats with

French names and marble colonnades, on parks with fountains, on splendid

operas and all kinds of glittering shows. Figures were figures, and,

much against the inclination of the Grand Duke, in fact without his

consent, the Court was gradually cut down.

The Princess Catherine, the sister of the Grand Duke, was never spoken

of in the capital without a touch of sympathy. She had been married to a

member of a neighbouring ruling House, had been left a widow, and had

come back to her brother's capital, where she lived with her red-headed

children in what used to be the Heir Apparent's palace on the

Albrechtstrasse, before whose gates a gigantic doorkeeper stood all day

long in a pompous attitude with staff and shoulder-belt complete, while

life went on with peculiar moderation inside.

Prince Lambert, the Grand Duke's brother, did not come in for much

attention. There was a coolness between him and his relations, who could

not forgive him his _mésalliance_, and he hardly ever came to Court. He

lived in his villa overlooking the public gardens with his wife, an

ex-dancer from the Court Theatre who bore the title of Baroness von

Rohrdorf, after one of the Prince's properties; and there he divided his

time between sport and theatre-going, and struggling with his debts. He

had dropped his dignities and lived just like a private citizen; and if

he was generally supposed to have a struggle to make two ends meet,

nobody gave him much sympathy for it.

But alterations had been made in the old castle itself--reductions of

expenses, which were discussed in the city and the country, and

discussed usually in an apprehensive and regretful sense, because the

people at bottom wished to see themselves represented with due pride and

magnificence. Several high posts at the Court had been amalgamated for

economy's sake, and for years past Herr von Bühl zu Bühl had been Lord

Marshal, Chief Master of the Ceremonies, and Marshal of the Household at

once. There had been many discharges in the Board of Green Cloth and the

servants' hall, among the pike-staffs, yeomen of the guard, and grooms,

the master cooks and chief confectioners, the court and chamber lackeys.

The establishment of the royal stable had been reduced to the barest

minimum.... And what was the good of it all? The Grand Duke's contempt

for money showed itself in sudden outbursts against the squeeze; and

while the catering at the Court functions reached the extreme limits of

permissible simplicity, while at the supper at the close of the Thursday

concerts in the Marble Hall nothing but continual roast beef with sauce

remoulade and ice-pudding were served on the red velvet coverings of the

gilt-legged tables, while the daily fare at the Grand Duke's own

candle-decked table was no better than that of an ordinary middle-class

family, he defiantly threw away a whole year's income on the repair of

the Grimmburg.

But meanwhile the rest of his seats were falling to pieces. Herr von

Bühl simply had not the means at his disposal for their upkeep. And yet

it was a pity in the case of many of them. Those which lay at some

little distance from the capital, or right out in the country, those

luxurious asylums cradled in natural beauties whose dainty names spoke

of rest, solitude, content, pastime, and freedom from care, or recalled

a flower or a jewel, served as holiday resorts for the citizens and

strangers, and brought in a certain amount in entrance-money which

sometimes--not always--was devoted to their upkeep. This was not the

case, however, with those in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital.

There was the little schloss in the Empire style, the Hermitage,

standing silent and graceful on the edge of the northern suburbs, but

long uninhabited and deserted in the middle of its over-grown park,

which joined on to the public gardens, and looked out on its little,

mud-stiff pond. There was Schloss Delphinenort which, only a quarter of

an hour's walk from the other, in the northern part of the public

gardens themselves, all of which had once belonged to the Crown,

mirrored its untidiness in a huge square fountain-basin; both were in a

sad state. That Delphinenort in particular--that noble structure in the

early baroque style, with its stately entrance-colonnade, its high

windows divided into little white-framed panes, its carved festoons, its

Roman busts in the niches, its splendid approach-stairs, its general

magnificence--should be abandoned to decay for ever, as it seemed, was

the sorrow of all lovers of architectural beauty; and when one day, as

the result of unforeseen, really strange circumstances, it was restored

to honour and youth, among them at any rate the satisfaction was

general.... For the rest, Delphinenort could be reached in fifteen or

twenty minutes from the spa-garden, which lay a little to the north-west

of the city, and was connected with its centre by a direct line of

trams.

The only residences used by the Grand Ducal family were Schloss

Hollerbrunn, the summer residence, an expanse of white buildings with

Chinese roofs, on the farther side of the chain of hills which

surrounded the capital, coolly and pleasantly situated on the river and

famed for the elder-hedges in its park; farther, Schloss Jägerpreis, the

ivy-covered hunting-box in the middle of the woods to westward; and

lastly, the Town Castle itself, called the "Old" Castle, although no new

one existed.

It was called thus, with no idea of comparison, simply because of its

age, and the critics declared that its redecoration was more a matter of

urgency than that of the Grimmburg. Even the inner rooms, which were in

daily use by the family, were faded and cracked, not to mention the many

uninhabited and unused rooms in the oldest parts of the many-styled

building, which were all choked and flyblown. For some time past the

public had been refused admission to them,--a measure which was

obviously due to the shocking state of the castle. But people who could

get a peep, the tradesmen and the staff, declared that there was

stuffing peeping out of more than one stiff, imposing piece of

furniture.

The castle and the Court Church together made up a grey, irregular, and

commanding mass of turrets, galleries, and gateways, half fortress, half

palace. Various epochs had contributed to its erection, and large parts

of it were decaying, weather-beaten, spoilt, and ready to fall into

pieces. To the west it dropped steeply down to the lower-lying city, and

was connected with it by battered steps clamped together with rusty iron

bars. But the huge main gate, guarded by lions couchant, and surmounted

by the pious, haughty motto: "Turris fortissima nomen Domini," in almost

illegible carving, faced the Albrechtsplatz. It had its sentries and

sentry boxes; it was the scene of the changing of the guard, with drums

and martial display; it was the playground of all the urchins of the

town.

The Old Castle had three courtyards, in the corners of which rose

graceful stair-turrets and between whose paving stones an unnecessary

amount of weeds was generally growing. But in the middle of one of the

courtyards stood the rose-bush,--it had stood there for ages in a bed,

although there was no other attempt at a garden to be seen. It was just

like any other rose-bush; it had a porter to tend it, it stood there in

snow, rain, and sunshine, and in due season it bore roses. These were

exceptionally fine roses, nobly formed, with dark-red velvet petals, a

pleasure to look at, and real masterpieces of nature. But those roses

had one strange and dreadful peculiarity: they had no scent! Or rather,

they had a scent, but for some unknown reason it was not the scent of

roses, but of decay--a slight, but plainly perceptible scent of decay.

Everybody knew it; it was in the guide-books, and strangers visited the

courtyard to convince themselves of it with their own noses. There was

also a popular idea that it was written somewhere that at some time or

other, on a day of rejoicings and public felicity, the blossoms of the

rose-bush would begin to give forth a natural and lovely odour.

After all, it was only to be expected that the popular imagination would

be exercised by the wonderful rose-bush. It was exercised in precisely

the same way by the "owl-chamber" in the Old Castle, which was used as a

lumber room. Its position was such that it could not be ignored, not far

from the "Gala Rooms," and the "Hall of the Knights," where the Court

officers used to assemble on Court days, and thus in a comparatively

modern part of the building. But there was certainly something uncanny

about it, especially as from time to time noises and cries occurred

there, which could not be heard outside the room and whose origin was

unascertainable. People swore that it came from ghosts, and many

asserted that it was especially noticeable when important and decisive

events in the Grand Ducal family were impending,--a more or less

gratuitous rumour, which deserved no more serious attention than other

national products of an historical and dynastic frame of mind, as for

instance a certain dark prophecy which had been handed down for hundreds

of years and may be mentioned in this connexion. It came from an old

gipsy-woman, and was to the effect that a prince "with one hand" would

bring the greatest good fortune to the country. The old hag had said:

"He will give to the country with one hand more than all the rest could

give it with two." That is how the prophecy was recorded, and how it was

quoted from time to time.

Round the Old Castle lay the capital, consisting of the Old Town and the

New Town, with their public buildings, monuments, fountains, and parks,

their streets and squares, named after princes, artists, deserving

statesmen, and distinguished citizens, divided into two very unequal

halves by the many-bridged river, which flowed in a great loop round the

southern end of the public garden, and was lost in the surrounding

hills. The city was a university town, it possessed an academy which was

not in much request and whose curricula were unpractical and rather

old-fashioned; the Professor of Mathematics, Privy Councillor

Klinghammer, was the only one of any particular repute in the scientific

world. The Court Theatre, though poorly endowed, maintained a decent

level of performances. There was a little musical, literary, and

artistic life; a certain number of foreigners came to the capital,

wishing to share in its well-regulated life and such intellectual

attractions as it offered, among them wealthy invalids who settled down

in the villas round the spa-gardens and were held in honour by the State

and the community as doughty payers of taxes.

And now you know what the town was like, what the country was like, and

how matters stood.

III

HINNERKE THE SHOEMAKER

The Grand Duke's second son made his first public appearance on the

occasion of his christening. This festivity aroused the same interest in

the country as always attached to happenings within the Royal Family

circle. It took place after weeks of discussion and research as to the

manner of its arrangement, was held in the Court Church by the President

of the High Consistory, Dom Wislezenus, with all the due ceremonial, and

in public, to the extent that the Lord Marshal's office, by the Prince's

orders, had issued invitations to it to every class of society.

Herr von Bühl zu Bühl, a courtly ritualist of the greatest

circumspection and accuracy, in his full-dress uniform superintended,

with the help of two masters of the ceremonies, the whole of the

intricate proceedings: the gathering of the princely guests in the Gala

Rooms, the solemn procession in which they, attended by pages and

squires, walked up the staircase of Heinrich the Luxurious and through a

covered passage into the church, the entry of the spectators from the

highest to the lowest, the distribution of the seats, the observance of

due decorum during the religious service itself, the order of precedence

at the congratulations which took place directly after the service was

ended.... He panted and puffed, smiled ingratiatingly, brandished his

staff, laughed in nervous bursts, and kept executing retreating bows.

The Court Church was decorated with plants and draperies. In addition to

the representatives of the nobility, of the Court and country, and of

the higher and lower Civil Service, tradesmen, country folk, and common

artisans, in high good humour, filled the seats. But in a half-circle of

red-velvet arm-chairs in front of the altar sat the relations of the

infant, foreign princes as sponsors and the trusty representatives of

such as had not come in person. The assemblage at the christening of the

Heir Apparent six years before had not been more distinguished. For in

view of Albrecht's delicacy, the advanced age of the Grand Duke, and the

dearth of Grimmburg relations, the person of the second-born prince was

at once recognized as an important guarantee for the future of the

dynasty. Little Albrecht took no part in the ceremony; he was kept to

his bed with an indisposition which Surgeon-General Eschrich declared to

be of a nervous character.

Dom Wislezenus preached from a text of the Grand Duke's own choosing.

The _Courier_, a gossiping city newspaper, had given a full account of

how the Grand Duke had one day fetched with his very own hands the large

metal-clasped family Bible out of the rarely visited library, had shut

himself up with it in his study, searched in it for a whole hour, at

last copied the text he had chosen on to a piece of paper with his

pocket-pencil, signed it "Johann Albrecht," and sent it to the Court

preacher. Dom Wislezenus treated it in a musical style, so as to speak,

like a _leit motif_. He turned it inside and out, dressed it in

different shapes and squeezed it dry; he announced it in a whisper, then

with the whole power of his lungs; and whereas, delivered lightly and

reflectively at the beginning of his discourse, it seemed a thin, almost

unsubstantial subject; at the close, when he for the last time thundered

it at the congregation, it appeared richly orchestrated, heavily scored,

and pregnant with emotion. Then he passed on to the actual baptism, and

carried it out at full length so that all could see it, with due stress

on every detail.

This, then, was the day of the prince's first public appearance, and

that he was the chief actor in the drama was clearly shown by the fact

that he was the last to come on the stage, and that his entry was

distinct from that of the rest of the company. Preceded by Herr von

Bühl, he entered slowly, in the arms of the Mistress of the Robes,

Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen, and all eyes were fixed on him. He was

asleep in his laces, his veils, and his white silk robe. One of his

little hands happened to be hidden. His appearance evoked unusual

delight and emotion. The cynosure and centre of attraction, he lay

quietly there, bearing it all, as may be supposed, patiently and

unassumingly. It was to his credit that he did not make any disturbance,

did not clutch or struggle; but, doubtless from innate trustfulness,

quietly resigned himself to the state which surrounded him, bore it

patiently, and even at that early date sank his own emotions in it....

The arms in which he reposed were frequently changed at fixed points in

the ceremony. Baroness Schulenburg handed him with a curtsey to his

aunt, Catherine, who, with a stern look on her face, was dressed in a

newly remade lilac silk dress, and wore Crown jewels in her hair. She

laid him, when the moment came, solemnly in his mother Dorothea's arms,

who, in all her stately beauty, with a smile on her proud and lovely

mouth, held him out a while to be blessed, and then passed him on. A

cousin held him for a minute or two, a child of eleven or twelve years

with fair hair, thin sticks of legs, cold bare arms, and a broad red

silk sash which stuck out in a huge knot behind her white dress. Her

peaked face was anxiously fixed on the Master of the Ceremonies....

Once the Prince woke up, but the flickering flames of the altar-candles

and a many-coloured shaft of sunlight dust blinded him, and made him

close his eyes again. And as there were no thoughts, but only soft

unsubstantial dreams in his head, as moreover he was feeling no pain at

the moment, he at once fell asleep again.

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

Klaus Heinrich.

And he slept on in his cot with its gilded cornice and blue silk

curtains, while the royal family feasted in the Marble Hall, and the

rest of the guests in the Hall of the Knights, in his honour.

The newspapers reported his first appearance; they described his looks

and his dress, and emphasized his truly princely behaviour, couching the

moving and inspiring account in words which had often done duty on

similar occasions. After that, the public for a long time heard little

of him, and he nothing of them.

He knew nothing as yet, understood nothing as yet, guessed nothing as to

the difficulty, danger, and sternness of the life prescribed for him;

nothing in his conduct suggested that he felt any contrast between

himself and the great public. His little existence was an irresponsible,

carefully supervised dream, played on a stage remote from the public

stage; and this stage was peopled with countless tinted phantoms, both

stationary and active, some emerging but transiently, some permanently

at hand.

Of the permanent ones, the parents were far in the back-ground, and not

altogether distinguishable. They were his parents, that was certain, and

they were exalted, and friendly too. When they approached there was a

feeling as if everything else slipped away to each side, and left a

respectable passage along which they advanced towards him to show him a

moment's tenderness. The nearest and clearest things to him were two

women with white caps and aprons, two beings who were obviously all

goodness, purity, and loving-kindness, who tended his little body in

every way, and were much distressed when he cried.... A close partner in

his life, too, was Albrecht, his brother; but he was grave, distant, and

much more advanced.

When Klaus Heinrich was two years old, another birth took place in the

Grimmburg, and a princess came into the world. Thirty-six guns were

allotted to her, because she was of the female sex, and she was given

the name of Ditlinde at the font. She was Klaus Heinrich's sister, and

it was a good thing for him that she appeared. She was at first

surprisingly small and weak, but she soon grew like him, caught him up,

and the two became inseparable. They shared each other's lives, each

other's views, feelings, and ideas: they communicated to each other

their impressions of the world outside them.

It was a world, they were impressions, calculated to produce a

reflective frame of mind. In winter they lived in the old castle. In

summer they lived in Hollerbrunn, the summer schloss, on the river, in

the cool, in the scent of the violet hedges with white statues between

them. On the way thither, or if at any other time father or mother took

them with them in one of the brown carriages with the little golden

crown on the door, all the passers-by stopped, cheered, and took their

hats off; for father was Prince and Ruler of the country, consequently

they themselves were Prince and Princess--undoubtedly in precisely the

same sense as were the princes and princesses in the French stories

which their Swiss governess told them. That was worth consideration, it

was at any rate a peculiar occurrence. When other children heard the

stories, they necessarily regarded the princes which figured in them

from a great distance, and as solemn beings whose rank was a

glorification of reality and with whom to concern themselves was

undoubtedly a chastening of their thoughts, and an escape from the

ordinary existence. But Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde regarded the heroes

of the stories as their own equals and fellows, they breathed the same

air as them, they lived in a schloss like them, they stood on a

fraternal footing with them, and were justified in identifying

themselves with them. Was it their lot, then, to live always and

continually on the height to which others only climbed when stories were

being told to them? The Swiss governess, true to her general principles,

would have found it impossible to deny it, if the children had asked the

question in so many words.

The Swiss governess was the widow of a Calvinistic minister and was in

charge of both children, each of whom had two lady's maids as well. She

was black and white throughout: her cap was white and her dress black,

her face was white, with white warts on one cheek, and her smooth hair

had a mixed black-and-white metallic sheen. She was very precise and

easily put out. When things happened which, though quite without danger,

could not be allowed, she clasped her white hands and turned her eyes up

to heaven. But her quietest and severest mode of punishment for serious

occasions was to "look sadly" at the children--implying that they had

lost their self-respect. On a fixed day she began, on a hint from higher

quarters, to address Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde as "Grand Ducal

Highness," and from that day she was more easily put out than before....

But Albrecht was called "Royal Highness." Aunt Catherine's children were

members of the family only on the distaff side, and so were of less

importance. But Albrecht was Crown Prince and Heir Apparent, so that it

was not at all unfitting that he should look so pale and distant and

keep so much to his bed. He wore Austrian coats with flap pockets and

cut long behind. His head had a big bump at the back and narrow temples,

and he had a long face. While still quite young he had come through a

serious illness, which, in the opinion of Surgeon-General Eschrich, was

the reason for his heart having "shifted over to the right." However

that might be, he had seen Death face to face, a fact which had probably

intensified the shy dignity which was natural to him. He seemed to be

extremely standoffish, cold from embarrassment, and proud from lack of

graciousness. He lisped a little and then blushed at doing so, because

he was always criticizing himself. His shoulder-blades were a little

uneven. One of his eyes had some weakness or other, so that he used

glasses for writing his exercises, which helped to make him look old and

wise.... Albrecht's tutor, Doctor Veit, a man with hanging mud-coloured

moustaches, hollow cheeks, and wan eyes unnaturally far apart, was

always at his left hand. Doctor Veit was always dressed in black, and

carried a book dangling down his thigh, with his index-finger thrust

between its leaves.

Klaus Heinrich felt that Albrecht did not care much for him, and he saw

that it was not only because of his inferiority in years. He himself was

tender-hearted and prone to tears, that was his nature. He cried, when

anybody "looked sadly" at him, and when he knocked his forehead against

a corner of the nursery table, so that it bled, he howled from sympathy

with his forehead. But Albrecht had faced Death, yet never cried on any

condition. He stuck his short, rounded underlip a little forward, and

sucked it lightly against the upper one--that was all. He was most

superior. The Swiss governess referred in so many words to him in

matters of _comme il faut_ as a model. He had never allowed himself to

converse with the gorgeous creatures who belonged to the court, not

exactly men and human beings, but lackeys--as Klaus Heinrich had

sometimes done in unguarded moments. For Albrecht was not curious. The

look in his eyes was that of a lonely boy, who had no wish to let the

world intrude upon him. Klaus Heinrich, on the contrary, chatted with

the lackeys from that same wish, and from an urgent though perhaps

dangerous and improper desire to feel some contact with what lay outside

the charmed circle. But the lackeys, young and old, at the doors, in the

corridors and the passage-rooms, with their sand-coloured gaiters and

brown coats, on the red-gold lace of which the same little crown as on

the carriage doors was repeated again and again--they straightened their

knees when Klaus Heinrich chatted to them, laid their great hands on the

seams of the thick velvet breeches, bent a little forward towards him,

so that the aiguillettes dangled from their shoulders, and returned

various, highly proper answers, the most important part of which was the

address "Grand Ducal Highness," and smiled as they did so with an

expression of cautious sympathy, which recalled the words of the old

song, "The lad that is born to be king." Sometimes when he got the

chance, Klaus Heinrich went on voyages of discovery in uninhabited parts

of the schloss, with Ditlinde, his sister, when she was old enough.

At that time he was having lessons from Schulrat Dröge, Rector of the

city schools, who was chosen to be his first tutor. Schulrat Dröge was a

born pedagogue. His index-finger, with its folds of dry skin and gold

stoneless signet-ring, followed the line of print when Klaus Heinrich

read, waiting before going on to the next word until the preceding one

had been read. He came in a frock-coat and white waistcoat, with the

ribbon of some inferior order in his button-hole, and in broad shiny

boots with brown upper-leathers. He wore a pointed grey beard, and bushy

grey hair grew out of his big, broad ears. His brown hair was brushed up

into points on his temples, and so precisely parted as to show clearly

his yellow dry scalp, which was full of holes like canvas. But thin grey

hair was visible under the strong brown hair behind and at the sides. He

bowed slightly to the lackeys who opened the door for him to the big

schoolroom at whose table Klaus Heinrich sat waiting for him. But to

Klaus Heinrich he did not confine himself to a superficial bow as he

entered the room, but made a pronounced and deliberate bow before he

came up to him, and waited for his exalted pupil to offer him his hand.

This Klaus Heinrich did; and the fact that he did so twice, not only

when he greeted him, but also when he took his departure, just in the

graceful and winning way in which he had seen his father give his hand

to those who expected it, seemed to him far more important and essential

than all the instruction which came between the two ceremonies.

After Schulrat Dröge had come and gone any number of times, Klaus

Heinrich had imperceptibly gained a knowledge of all sorts of practical

things: to everybody's surprise he was quite at home in every kind of

reading, writing, and arithmetic, and could reel off to order the names

of the towns in the Grand Duchy pretty well without an omission. But, as

has been said, this was not what was in his opinion really necessary and

essential for him. From time to time, when he was inattentive at his

lessons, the Schulrat rebuked him with a reference to his exalted

calling. "Your exalted calling requires you ..." he would say or: "You

owe it to your exalted calling...." What was his calling, and how was it

exalted? Why did the lackeys smile as if to say, "The lad that is born

to be king," and why was his governess so much put out when he let

himself go a little in speech or action? He looked round him, and at

times, when he looked steadily and long and forced himself to probe the

essence of the phenomena around him, a dim apprehension arose in him of

the "aloofness" of his position.

He was standing in one of the "gala rooms," the Silver Hall, in which,

as he knew, his father the Grand Duke received solemn deputations--he

happened to have wandered into it by himself and he took stock of his

surroundings.

It was winter-time and cold, his little shoes were reflected in the

glass-clear yellow squares of the parquet which spread like a sheet of

ice before him. The ceiling, covered with silvered arabesque-work, was

so high that a long metal shaft was necessary to allow the many-armed

silver chandelier with its forest of tall white candles to swing in the

middle of the great space. Below the ceiling came silver-framed

coats-of-arms in faded colours. The walls were edged with silver, and

hung with white silk with yellow spots, not to mention a split here and

there. A sort of monumental baldachin, resting on two strong silver

columns and decorated in front with a silver garland, broken in two

places, from the top of which looked down a portrait of a deceased,

powdered ancestress draped in imitation ermine, formed the

chimney-piece. On each side of the fireplace were broad silvered

arm-chairs upholstered in torn white silk. On the side walls opposite

each other towered enormous silver-framed mirrors, whose glass was

covered with blind spots, and on each side of whose broad white marble

ledges stood two candelabra which carried big white candles like the

sconces on the walls all round, and like the four silver candlesticks

which stood in the corners. Before the high windows to the right,

looking over the Albrechtsplatz, whose outer ledges were covered with

snow, white silk curtains, yellow spotted, with silver cords and trimmed

with lace, fell in rich, and heavy folds to the floor. In the middle of

the room, under the chandelier, a moderate-sized table, with a pedestal

made like a knobby silver tree-stump and a top made of eight triangles

of opaque mother-of-pearl, stood useless, as there were no chairs round

it, and it could only serve, and be meant to serve, at the very best, as

a support for your Highness, when the lackeys opened the doors and

ushered in the solemn figures in Court dress who came to present their

respects to you....

Klaus Heinrich looked round the hall, and clearly saw that there was

nothing here which reminded him of the realities which Schulrat Dröge,

for all his bows, was always impressing upon him. Here all was Sunday

and solemnity, just as in church, where also he would have felt the

calls made on him by his tutor out of place. Everything here was severe

and empty show and a formal symmetry, self-sufficient, pointless, and

uncomfortable--whose functions were obviously to create an atmosphere of

awe and tension, not of freedom and ease, to inculcate an attitude of

decorum and discreet self-obliteration towards an unnamed object. And it

was cold in the silver hall--cold as in the halls of the snow-king,

where the children's hearts froze stiff.

Klaus Heinrich walked over the glassy floor and stood at the table in

the middle. He laid his right hand lightly on the mother-of-pearl table,

and placed the left hand on his hip, so far behind that it rested almost

in the small of his back, and was not visible from in front, for it was

an ugly sight, brown and wrinkled, and had not kept pace with the right

in its growth. He stood resting on one leg, with the other a little

advanced, and kept his eyes fixed on the silver ornaments of the door.

It was not the place nor the attitude for dreaming, and yet he dreamed.

He saw his father, and looked at him as he looked at the hall, to try to

grasp his meaning. He saw the dull haughtiness of his blue eyes, the

furrows which, proudly and morosely, ran from nostril down to his beard,

and were often deepened or accentuated by weariness and boredom....

Nobody dared to address him or to go freely up to him and speak to him

unasked--not even the children: it was forbidden, it was dangerous. He

answered, it is true: but he answered distantly and coldly, a look of

helplessness, of _gêne_, passed over his face, which Klaus Heinrich was

quite able to understand.

Papa made a speech and sent his petitioners away; that is what always

happened. He gave an audience at the beginning of the Court ball, and at

the end of the dinner with which the winter began. He went with mamma

through the rooms and halls, in which the members of the Court were

gathered, went through the Marble Hall and the Gala Rooms, through the

Picture Gallery, the Hall of the Knights, the Hall of the Twelve Months,

the Audience Chamber, and the Ball-room--went not only in a fixed

direction, but along a fixed path which bustling Herr von Bühl kept free

for him, and addressed a few words to the assembled throng. Whoever was

addressed by him bowed low, left a space of parquet between himself and

papa, and answered soberly and with signs of gratification. Thereupon

papa greeted them over the intervening space, from the stronghold of

precise regulations which prescribed the others' movements and warranted

his own attitude, greeted them smilingly and lightly and passed on.

Smilingly and lightly.... Of course, of course, Klaus Heinrich quite

understood it, the look of helplessness which passed for one moment over

papa's face when anybody was impetuous enough to address him

unasked--understood it, and shared his feeling of _gêne_! It wounded

something, some soft, virgin envelope of our existence which was so

essential to it that we stood helpless when anybody roughly broke

through it. And yet it was this same something which made our eyes so

dull, and gave us those deep furrows of boredom....

Klaus Heinrich stood and saw--he saw his mother and her beauty, which

was famed and extolled far and wide. He saw her standing _en robe de

ceremonie_, in front of her great candle-lighted glass, for sometimes,

on solemn occasions, he was allowed to be present when the Court

hairdresser and the bed-chamber women put the last touches to her

toilette. Herr von Knobelsdorff also was present when mamma put on

jewels from the Crown regalia, watched and noted down the stones which

she decided to use. With all the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes

showing, he would make mamma laugh with his droll remarks, so that her

soft cheeks filled with lovely little dimples. But her laugh was full of

art and grace, and she looked in the glass as she laughed, as if she

were practising it.

People said that Slav blood flowed in her veins, and that it was that

which gave the sweet radiance to her deep-blue eyes and the night of her

raven hair. Klaus Heinrich was like her, so he heard people say, in that

he too had steel-blue eyes with dark hair, while Albrecht and Ditlinde

were fair, just as papa had been before his hair turned grey. But he was

far from handsome, owing to the breadth of his cheek-bones, and

especially to his left hand, which mamma was always reminding him to

hide adroitly, in the side-pocket of his coat, behind his back, or under

the breast of his jacket--especially when his affectionate impulses

prompted him to throw both his arms round her. Her look was cold when

she bade him mind his hand.

He saw her as she was in the picture in the Marble Hall: in a short silk

dress with lace flounces and long gloves, which showed only a glimpse of

her ivory arm under her puffed sleeves, a diadem in the night of her

hair, her stately form erect, a smile of cool perfection on her

strangely hard lips--and behind her the metallic-blue wheel of a

peacock's tail. Her face was soft, but its beauty made it stern, and it

was easy to see that her heart too was stern and absorbed in her beauty.

She slept far into the day when a ball or party was in prospect, and ate

only yolks of eggs, so as not to overload herself. Then in the evening

she was radiant as she walked on papa's arm along the prescribed path

through the halls--grey-haired dignitaries blushed when they were

addressed by her, and the _Courier_ reported that it was not only

because of her exalted rank that her Royal Highness had been the queen

of the ball. Yes, people felt happier for the sight of her, whether it

was at the Court or outside in the streets, or in the afternoon driving

or riding in the park--and their cheeks kindled. Flowers and cheers met

her, all hearts went out to her, and it was clear that the people in

cheering her were cheering themselves, and that their glad cries meant

that they were cheered and elevated by the sight of her. But Klaus

Heinrich knew well that mamma had spent long, anxious hours on her

beauty, that there was practice and method in her smiles and greetings,

and that her own pulse beat never the quicker for anything or anyone.

Did she love anyone--himself, Klaus Heinrich, for instance, for all his

likeness to her? Why, of course she did, when she had time to, even when

she coldly reminded him of his hand. But it seemed as if she reserved

any expression or sign of her tender feelings for occasions when

lookers-on were present who were likely to be edified by them. Klaus

Heinrich and Ditlinde did not often come into contact with their mother,

chiefly because they, unlike Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, for some time

past, did not have their meals at their parents' table, but apart with

the Swiss governess; and when they were summoned to mamma's boudoir,

which happened once a week, the interview consisted in a few casual

questions and polite answers--giving no scope for displays of feeling,

while its whole drift seemed to be the proper way to sit in an arm-chair

with a teacup full of milk.

But at the concerts which took place in the Marble Hall every other

Thursday under the name of "The Grand Duchess's Thursdays," and were so

arranged that the Court sat at little gilt-legged velvet-covered tables,

while the leading tenor Schramm from the Court Theatre, accompanied by

an orchestra, sang so lustily that the veins swelled on his bald

temples--at the concerts Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde, in their best

clothes, were sometimes allowed in the Hall for one song and the

succeeding pause, when mamma showed how fond she was of them, showed it

to them and to everybody else in so heartfelt and expressive a way that

nobody could have any doubt about it. She summoned them to the table at

which she sat, and told them with a happy smile to sit beside her, laid

their cheeks on her shoulders or bosom, looked at them with a soft,

soulful look in her eyes and kissed them both on forehead and mouth.

Then the ladies bent their heads and their eyelids quivered, while the

men slowly nodded and bit their lips in order, in manly wise, to

restrain their emotions.... Yes, it was beautiful, and the children felt

they had their share in the effect, which was greater than anything

Schramm the singer could procure with his most inspired notes, and

nestled close to mamma. For Klaus Heinrich at last realized that it was

in the nature of things, no business of ours, to have a simple feeling

and to be made happy by it, but that it was our duty to make our

tenderness visible to the Hall and to exhibit it, that the hearts of our

guests might swell.

Occasionally the people outside in the town and park also were allowed

to see that mamma loved us. For while Albrecht drove or rode--bad rider

though he was--with the Grand Duke early in the morning, Klaus Heinrich

and Ditlinde had from time to time to take turns at accompanying mamma

on her drives, which took place in the spring and autumn at the time of

the afternoon promenade, with Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen in

attendance. Klaus Heinrich was a little excited and feverish before

these drives, to which unfortunately no enjoyment, but on the contrary a

great deal of trouble and effort attached. For, directly the open

carriage came out through the Lions Gate on to the Albrechtsplatz, past

the grenadiers at the "present," there were a lot of people collected,

waiting for it--men, women, and children, who shouted and stared full of

curiosity; and that meant pulling oneself together, sitting up erect,

smiling, hiding the left hand, and saluting in such a way as to make the

people happy. And so it went on right through the city and the fields.

Other vehicles were obliged to keep away from ours; the police looked to

that. But the foot-passengers stood on the kerb, the women curtseyed,

the men took off their hats and looked with eyes full of devotion and

importunate curiosity,--and this was the impression Klaus Heinrich got:

that they all were there just to be there and to stare, while he was

there to show himself and to be stared at; and his was far the harder

part. He kept his left hand in his coat-pocket and smiled as mamma

wished him to, while he felt that his cheeks were aglow. But the

_Courier_ reported that the rosy redness of our little duke's cheeks

showed what a healthy boy he was.

Klaus Heinrich was thirteen years old when he stood at the solitary

mother-of-pearl table in the middle of the cold silver hall, and tried

to probe the reality of things around him. And as he scrutinized the

various phenomena: the empty, torn pride of the room, aimless and

uncomfortable, the symmetry of the white candles, which seemed to

express awe and tension and discreet self-obliteration, the passing

shadow on his father's face when anybody addressed him unasked, the cool

and calculated beauty of his mother, whose one object was admiration,

the devoted and importunately curious gaze of the people outside--then a

suspicion seized him, a vague and approximate conception of his

situation. But simultaneously horror seized him, terror at such a

destiny, a dread of his "exalted calling," so strong that he turned

round and covered his eyes with both his hands--both, the little

wrinkled left one too--and sank down at the lonely table and cried,

cried from sympathy with himself and his heart--till they came, and

wrung their hands and turned their eyes up to heaven and questioned him,

and led him away.... He gave out that he had been frightened, and that

was quite true.

He had known nothing, understood nothing, suspected nothing of the

difficulty and sternness of the life prescribed for him; he had been

merry and careless, and had given his guardians many a scare. But there

was no resisting the impressions which soon came thronging upon him and

forcing him to open his eyes to the real state of things. In the

northern suburbs, not far from the spa-gardens, a new road had been

opened: people told him that the City Council had decided to call it

"Klaus Heinrich Strasse." Once when driving out with his mother and he

called at a picture-dealer's, they wanted to buy something. The footman

waited at the carriage door, the public gathered round, the

picture-dealer bustled about--there was nothing new in all that. But

Klaus Heinrich for the first time noticed his photograph in the shop

window. It was hanging next those of artists and great men, men with

lofty brows, with a look of the loneliness of fame in their eyes.

People were satisfied with him on the whole. He gained dignity with

years, and self-possession under the pressure of his exalted calling.

But the strange thing was that his longing increased at the same time:

that roving inquisitiveness which Schulrat Dröge was not the man to

satisfy, and which had impelled him to chat with the lackeys. He had

given up doing that; it did not lead to anything. They smiled at him,

confirming him by that very laugh in the suspicion that his world of the

symmetrically marshalled candles presented an unconscious antithesis to

the world outside, but they were no manner of help to him. He looked

round about him on the expeditions, in the walks he took through the

town gardens with Ditlinde and the Swiss governess, followed by a

lackey. He felt that if they were all of one mind to stare at him, while

he was all alone and made conspicuous just to be stared at, he also had

no share in their being and doing. He realized that they presumably were

not always as he saw them, when they stood and greeted him with

deferential looks; that it must be his birth and upbringing which made

their looks deferential, and that it was with them as with the children

when they heard about fairy princes, and were thereby refined and

elevated above their work-a-day selves. But he did not know what they

looked like and were when they were not refined and elevated above their

work-a-day selves--his "exalted calling" concealed this from him, and it

was a dangerous and improper wish to allow his heart to be moved by

things which his exaltedness concealed from him. And yet he wished it,

he wished it from a jealousy and that roving inquisitiveness which

sometimes drove him to undertake voyages of exploration into unknown

regions of the old Schloss, with Ditlinde his sister, when the

opportunity offered.

They called it "rummaging," and great was the charm of "rummaging"; for

it was difficult to acquire familiarity with the ground-plan and

structure of the old Schloss, and every time they penetrated far enough

into the remoter parts they found rooms, closets, and empty halls which

they had not yet trodden, or strange round-about ways to already-known

rooms. But once when thus wandering about they had a rencontre, an

adventure befell them, which made a great impression on Klaus Heinrich,

though he did not show it, and opened his eyes.

The opportunity came. While the Swiss governess was absent on leave to

attend the evening service, they had drunk their milk from tea-cups with

the Grand Duchess, accompanied by the two ladies-in-waiting, had been

dismissed and directed to go back hand-in-hand to their ordinary

occupations in the nursery, which lay not far off. It was thought that

they needed nobody to go with them; Klaus Heinrich was old enough to

take care of Ditlinde, of course. He was; and in the corridor he said:

"Yes, Ditlinde, we will certainly go back to the nursery, but we need

not go, you know, the shortest, dullest way. We'll rummage a bit first.

If you go up one step and follow the corridor as far as where the arches

begin, you'll find a hall with pillars behind them, and if you go out of

one of the doors of the hall with pillars--clamber up the corkscrew

staircase, you come to a room with a wooden roof; and there are lots of

funny things lying about there. But I don't know what comes after the

room, and that's what we've got to find out. So let's go."

"Yes, let's," said Ditlinde, "but not too far, Klaus Heinrich, and not

where it's too dusty, for this dress shows everything."

She was wearing a dress of dark-red velvet, trimmed with satin of the

same colour. She had at that time dimples in her elbows, and light

golden hair, that curled round her ears like ram's horns. In after years

she was pale and thin. She too had the broad, rather over-prominent

cheek-bones of her father and nation, but they were not accentuated, so

that they did not spoil the lines of her face. But with Klaus Heinrich

they were strong and emphatic, so that they seemed somewhat to encroach

upon, to narrow and to lengthen his steel-coloured eyes. His dark hair

was smoothly parted, cut in a careful rectangle on the temples, and

brushed straight back from the forehead. He wore an open jacket with a

waistcoat buttoning at the throat and a white turn-down collar. In his

right hand he held Ditlinde's little hand, but his left arm hung down,

with its brown, wrinkled, and undeveloped hand, thin and short from the

shoulder. He was glad that he could let it hang without bothering to

conceal it; for there was nobody there to stare and to require to be

elevated and inspired, and he himself might stare and examine to his

heart's content.

So they went and rummaged as they liked. Quiet reigned in the corridors,

and they saw hardly a lackey in the distance. They climbed up a

staircase and followed the passage till they came to the arches, showing

that they were in the part of the Schloss which dated from the time of

John the Headstrong and Heinrich the Confessor, as Klaus Heinrich knew

and explained. They came to the hall of the pillars, and Klaus Heinrich

there whistled several notes close after each other, for the first were

still sounding when the last came, and so a clear chord rang under the

vaulted ceiling. They scrambled groping and often on hands and knees up

the stone winding staircase which opened behind one of the heavy doors,

and reached the room with the wooden ceiling, in which there were

several strange objects. There were some broken muskets of clumsy size

with thickly rusted locks, which had been too bad for the museum, and a

discarded throne with torn red velvet cushions, short wide-splayed

lion-legs, and cupids hovering over the chair-back, bearing a crown.

Then there was a wicked-looking, dusty, cage-like, and horribly

interesting thing, which intrigued them much and long. If they were not

quite mistaken, it was a rat-trap, for they could see the iron spike to

put the bacon on, and it was dreadful to think how the trap-door must

fall down behind the great beast.... Yes, this took time, and when they

stood up after examining the rat-trap their faces were hot, and their

clothes stiff with rust and dust. Klaus Heinrich brushed them both down,

but that did not do much good, for his hands were as filthy as his

clothes. And suddenly they saw that dusk had begun to fall. They must

return quickly, Ditlinde insisted anxiously on that; it was too late to

go any farther.

"That's an awful pity," said Klaus Heinrich. "Who knows what else we

mightn't have found, and when we shall get another chance of rummaging,

Ditlinde!" But he followed his sister and they hurried back down the

turret-stairs, crossed the hall of the pillars, and came out into the

arcade, intending to hurry home hand-in-hand.

Thus they wandered on for a time; but Klaus Heinrich shook his head, for

it seemed to him that this was not the way he had come. They went still

farther; but several signs told them that they had mistaken their

direction. This stone seat with the griffin-heads was not standing here

before. That pointed window looked to the west over the low-lying

quarter of the town and not over the inner courtyard with the rose-bush.

They were going wrong, it was no use denying it; perhaps they had left

the hall of the pillars by a wrong exit--anyhow they had absolutely lost

their way.

They went back a little, but their disquietude would not allow them to

go very far back, so they turned right about again, and decided to push

on the way they had already come, and to trust to luck. Their way lay

through a damp, stuffy atmosphere, and great undisturbed cobwebs

stretched across the corners; they went with heavy hearts, and Ditlinde

especially was full of repentance and on the brink of tears. People

would notice her absence, would "look sadly" at her, perhaps even tell

the Grand Duke; they would never find the way, would be forgotten and

die of hunger. And where there was a rat-trap, Klaus Heinrich, there

were also rats.... Klaus Heinrich comforted her. They only had to find

the place where the armour and crossed standards hung; from that point

he was quite sure of the direction. And suddenly--they had just passed a

bend in the winding passage--suddenly something happened. It startled

them dreadfully.

What they had heard was more than the echo of their own steps, they were

other, strange steps, heavier than theirs; they came towards them now

quickly, now hesitatingly, and were accompanied by a snorting and

grumbling which made their blood run cold. Ditlinde made as if to run

away from fright: but Klaus Heinrich would not let go her hand, and they

stood with starting eyes waiting for what was coming.