It was a man who was just visible in the half-darkness, and, calmly

considered, his appearance was not horrifying. He was squat in figure,

and dressed like a veteran soldier. He wore a frock-coat of

old-fashioned cut, a woollen comforter round his neck and a medal on his

breast. He held in one hand a curly top-hat and in the other the bone

handle of his clumsily rolled-up umbrella, which he tapped on the flags

in time with his steps. His thin grey hair was plastered up from one ear

in wisps over his skull. He had bow-shaped black eyebrows, and a

yellow-white beard, which grew like the Grand Duke's, heavy upper-lids,

and watery blue eyes with pouches of withered skin under them; he had

the usual high cheek-bones, and the furrows of his sun-burnt face were

like crevasses. When he had come quite close he seemed to recognize the

children, for he placed himself against the outer wall of the passage,

at once fronted round and began to make a number of bows, consisting of

several short forward jerks of his whole body from the feet upwards,

while he imparted a look of honesty to his mouth and held his top-hat

crown-downwards in front of him. Klaus Heinrich meant to pass him by

with a nod, but was surprised into halting, for the veteran began to

speak.

"I beg pardon!" he suddenly grunted; then went on in a more natural

voice: "I earnestly beg your young Highnesses' pardon! But would your

young Highnesses take it amiss if I addressed to them the request that

they would very kindly acquaint me with the nearest way to the nearest

exit? It need not actually be the Albrechtstor--not in the least

necessary that it should be the Albrechtstor. But any exit from the

Schloss, if I dare be so free as to address this inquiry to your young

Highnesses...."

Klaus Heinrich had laid his left hand on his hip, right behind, so that

it lay almost in his back, and looked at the ground. The man had simply

spoken to him, had engaged him directly and unavoidably in conversation;

he thought of his father and knitted his brows. He pondered feverishly

over the question how he ought to behave in this topsy-turvy and

incorrect situation. Albrecht would have pursed up his mouth, sucked

with his short, rounded under-lip lightly against the upper, and passed

on in silence--so much was certain. But what was the use of rummaging if

at the first serious adventure one intended to pass on in dignity and

dudgeon? And the man was honest, and had nothing wicked about him: that

Klaus Heinrich could see when he forced himself to raise his eyes. He

simply said: "You come with us, that's the best way. I will willingly

show you where you must turn off to get to an exit." And they went on.

"Thanks!" said the man. "Ever so many thanks for your kindness! Heaven

knows I should never have thought that I should live to walk about the

Old Schloss one day with your young Highnesses. But there it is, and

after all my annoyance--for I have been annoyed, terribly annoyed,

that's true and certain--after all my annoyance I have at any rate this

honour and this satisfaction."

Klaus Heinrich longed to ask what might have been the reason for so much

annoyance; but the veteran went straight on (and tapped his umbrella in

regular time on the flags as he went). "... and I recognized your young

Highnesses at once, although it is a bit dark here in the passage, for I

have seen you many a time in the carriage, and was always delighted, for

I myself have just such a couple of brats at home--I mean to say, mine

are brats, mine are ... and the boy is called Klaus Heinrich too."

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

"There's no luck about it," said the man, "considering he was named

expressly after you, for he is a couple of months younger than you, and

there are lots of children in the town and country who are called that,

and all of them after you. No, one can hardly call it luck...."

Klaus Heinrich concealed his hand and remained silent.

"Yes, recognized you at once," said the man. "And I thought, thank

Heaven, thought I, that's what I call fortune in misfortune, and they'll

help you out of the trap into which you have stuck your nose, you old

blockhead, and you've good reason to laugh, thought I, for there's many

a one has trudged about here and been guyed by those popinjays, and

hasn't got out of it so well...."

Popinjays? thought Klaus Heinrich ... and guyed? He looked straight in

front of him, he did not dare to ask. A fear, a hope struck him.... He

said quite simply: "They ... they guyed you?"

"Not half!" said the man. "I should think they did, the ogres, and no

mistake! But I don't mind telling your young Highnesses, young though

you are, but it'll do you good to hear it, that these people here are a

set of wasters. A man comes and delivers his work as respectfully as

possible.... Yes, bless my soul!" he cried suddenly, and tapped his

forehead with his hat. "I haven't yet introduced myself to your young

Highnesses and told you who I am, have I?--Hinnerke!" he said,

"Master-cobbler Hinnerke, Royal warrant-holder, pensioner and

medallist." And he pointed with the index-finger of his great, rough,

yellow-spotted hand to the medal on his breast. "The fact is, that his

Royal Highness, your father, has been graciously pleased to order a pair

of boots from me, top-boots, riding-boots, with spurs, and made of the

best quality patent-leather. They're my speciality, and I made them

myself and took a lot of trouble about them, and they were ready to-day

and ever so smart. 'You must go yourself,' says I to myself.... I have a

boy who delivers, but I says to myself: 'You must go yourself, they are

for the Grand Duke.' So I rig myself out and take my boots and go to the

Schloss. 'All right,' say the lackeys down below, and want to take them

from me, 'No!' say I, for I don't trust them. It's my reputation gets me

my orders and my warrant, let me tell your Highnesses, not because I tip

the lackeys. But the fellows are spoilt by tips from the

warrant-holders, and want to get something out of me for their trouble.

'No,' say I, for I'm not a one for bribing and underhand dealings, 'I'll

deliver them myself, and if I can't give them to the Grand Duke himself,

I'll give them to Valet Prahl.' They looked daggers, but they say: 'Then

you must go up there!' And I go up there. There are some more of them up

there, and they say 'All right!' and want to take charge of the boots,

but I ask for Prahl and stick to it. They say: 'He's having his tea,'

but I'm determined and say, 'Then I'll wait till he's finished.' And

just as I say it, who comes by in his buckled shoes but Valet Prahl. And

he sees me, and I give him the boots with a few modest words, and he

says 'All right!' and actually adds: 'They're fine!' and nods and takes

them off. Now I'm satisfied, for Prahl, he's safe, so off I go. 'Hi!'

cries somebody. 'Mr. Hinnerke! You're going wrong!' 'Damn!' says I, and

right about, and go off in the other direction. But that was the

stupidest thing I could do, for they had sent me to Jericho, and that's

just where I don't want to go. I walk on a bit and meet another one, and

ask him the way to the Albrechtstor. But he spots at once what's up, and

says: 'Go up the stairs, and then keep to the left and then down again,

and you'll cut off a large corner!' And I believe he means it kindly and

do what he says, and get more and more muddled and altogether lose my

bearings. Then I see that it's not my fault, but the rogues', and it

strikes me that I have heard that they often play that trick on Court

tradesmen who don't tip them, and let them wander about till they sweat.

And my fury makes me blind and stupid, and I get to places where there's

not a living soul, and don't know where I am and get properly put about.

And at last I meet your young Highnesses. Yes, that's how it is with me

and my boots!" ended Shoemaker Hinnerke, and wiped his forehead with the

back of his hand.

Klaus Heinrich squeezed Ditlinde's hand. His heart beat so loud that he

absolutely forgot to hide his left hand. That was it. That was a touch

of it, an outline! No doubt about it, that was the sort of thing his

"exalted calling" shielded him from, the sort of thing people did when

they were in the ordinary, work-a-day frame of mind. The lackeys.... He

said nothing, words failed him.

"I see that your young Highnesses don't answer," said the shoemaker. And

his honest voice was filled with emotion. "I oughtn't to have told you,

because it isn't your business to get to know all the wickedness that

goes on. But yet I don't know," he said, laid his head on one side and

snapped his fingers, "that it can do any harm, that it can do you any

harm for the future and later on...."

"The lackeys ..." said Klaus Heinrich, and took a plunge ... "are they

wicked? I can quite well fancy ..."

"Wicked?" said the cobbler. "Good-for-nothings they are. That's the name

for them. Do you know what they're good for? They keep the goods back

when no tip's forthcoming, keep them back when the tradesman delivers

them punctually at the time ordered, and only hand them over days late,

so that the tradesman gets blamed, and is considered by the Grand Duke

to have failed in his duty and he loses his orders. That's what they do

without scruple, and the whole town knows it...."

"That's most annoying!" said Klaus Heinrich. He listened, listened. He

hardly realized how much shocked he was. "Do they do anything else?" he

said. "I'm quite sure they must do other things of the same kind."

"You bet!" said the man, and laughed. "No, they don't miss a chance, let

me tell your Highnesses, they have all sorts of dodges. There's the

door-opening joke, for instance.... That's like this. Your father, our

gracious Grand Duke, grants an audience to somebody, let's suppose he's

a new hand and it's his first time at Court. And he comes in a frock

coat all sweat and shivers, for it is of course no trifle to stand

before his Royal Highness for the first time. And the lackeys laugh at

him, because they're quite at home here, and tow him into the ante-room,

and he doesn't know where he is, and absolutely forgets to tip the

lackeys. But then comes his moment, and the adjutant says his name, and

the lackeys throw open the double-doors and let him into the room in

which the Grand Duke is waiting. Then the new hand stands there and bows

and says what he has to say, and the Grand Duke graciously gives him his

hand, and so he is dismissed and walks backwards, and thinks the

folding-doors are going to open behind him, as he has been definitely

promised. But they don't open, I tell your Highnesses, for the lackeys

have got their knife into him, because they haven't been tipped, and

don't stir a finger for him outside there. But he daren't turn round,

absolutely daren't, because he daren't show the Grand Duke his back,

that would be grossly bad manners and an insult to his Highness. And

then he feels behind him for the door-handle and can't find it, and gets

the jumps and scrabbles around on the door, and when at last by the

mercy of Providence he finds the knob it's an old-fashioned lock, and he

doesn't understand it and fiddles and dislocates his arm and tires

himself out and keeps bowing all the time in his agitation, until at

last his Highness graciously lets him out with his own hand. Yes, that's

the door-opening joke! But that's nothing to what I'm going to tell your

Highness...."

They had been so deep in conversation that they had scarcely noticed

where they were going, had gone down the stairs and reached the

ground-floor, close to the Albrechtstor. Eiermann, one of the Grand

Duchess's grooms-of-the-chamber, came towards them. He wore a violet

coat and side-whiskers. He had been sent out to look for their Grand

Ducal Highnesses. He shook his head while still at a distance, in lively

concern, and pursed his mouth up like a funnel. But when he noticed

Shoemaker Hinnerke walking with the children and tapping with his

umbrella, all the muscles of his face relaxed and his jaw dropped.

There was scarcely time for thanks and farewells, Eiermann was in such a

hurry to part the children from the shoemaker. And with many a gloomy

prophecy he led their Grand Ducal Highnesses up to their room to the

Swiss governess.

Eyes were turned to heaven, hands were wrung about their absence and the

state of their clothes. The worst of all happened, they were "looked at

sadly." But Klaus Heinrich confined his contrition to the bare minimum.

He thought: "So the lackeys took money and let the tradesmen wander

about the corridors if they did not get any, kept the goods back, that

the tradesmen might get blamed, and did not open the folding-doors, so

that the suitor had to scrabble. That's what happened in the Schloss,

and what must it be outside? Outside among the people who stared at him

so respectfully and so strangely, when he drove by with his hand to his

hat ...? But how had the man dared to tell it him? Not one single time

had he called him Grand Ducal Highness; he had forced himself on him and

offended his birth and upbringing. And yet, why was it so

extraordinarily pleasant to hear all that about the lackeys? Why did his

heart beat with such rapt pleasure, when moved by some of the wild and

bold things in which his Highness bore no part?"

IV

DOCTOR UEBERBEIN

Klaus Heinrich spent three of his boyhood's years in the company of boys

of his own age of the Court and country nobility of the monarchy in an

institution, a kind of aristocratic seminary, which von Knobelsdorff,

the House Minister, had founded and set in order on his behalf in the

"Pheasantry" hunting-schloss.

A Crown property for centuries past, Schloss "Pheasantry" gave its name

to the first stopping-place of a State railway running north-west from

the capital, and itself took it from a "tame" pheasant preserve,

situated not far off among the meadows and woods, which had been the

hobby of a former ruler. The Schloss, a one-storied box-like country

house with a shingle roof topped by lightning conductors, stood with

stables and coach-house on the skirts of extensive fir plantations. With

a row of aged lime trees in front, it looked out over a broad expanse of

meadowland fringed by a distant bluish circle of woods and intersected

by paths, with many a bare patch of play-ground and hurdles for obstacle

riding. Opposite the corner of the Schloss was a refreshment pavilion, a

beer and coffee garden planted with high trees, which a prudent man

called Stavenüter had rented and which was thronged on Sundays in summer

by excursionists, especially bicyclists, from the capital. The pupils of

the "Pheasantry" were only allowed to visit the pavilion in charge of a

tutor.

There were five of them, not counting Klaus Heinrich: Trümmerhauff,

Gumplach, Platow, Prenzlau, and Wehrzahn. They were called "the

Pheasants" in the country round. They had a landau from the Court

stables which had seen its best days, a dog-cart, a sledge, and a few

hacks, and when in winter some of the meadows were flooded and frozen

over, they had an opportunity of skating. There was one cook, two

chamber-maids, one coachman, and two lackeys at the "Pheasantry," one of

whom could drive at a pinch.

Professor Kürtchen, a little suspicious and irritable bachelor with the

airs of a comic actor and the manners of an old French chevalier, was

head of the seminary. He wore a stubby grey moustache, a pair of gold

spectacles in front of his restless brown eyes, and always out-of-doors

a top hat on the back of his head. He stuck his belly out as he walked

and held his little fists on each side of his stomach like a

long-distance runner. He treated Klaus Heinrich with self-satisfied

tact, but was full of suspicion of the noble arrogance of his other

pupils and fired up like a tom-cat when he scented any signs of contempt

for him as a commoner. He loved when out for a walk, if there were

people close by, to stop and gather his pupils in a knot around him and

explain something to them, drawing diagrams in the sand with his stick.

He addressed Frau Amelung, the housekeeper, a captain's widow who smelt

strongly of drugs, as "my lady" and showed thus that he knew what was

what in the best circles.

Professor Kürtchen was helped by a yet younger assistant teacher with a

doctor's degree--a good-humoured, energetic man, bumptious but

enthusiastic, who influenced Klaus Heinrich's views and conscience

perhaps more than was good for him. A gymnastic instructor called Zotte

had also been appointed. The assistant teacher, it may be remarked in

passing, was called Ueberbein, Raoul Ueberbein. The rest of the staff

came every day by railway from the capital.

Klaus Heinrich remarked with appreciation that the demands made on him

from the point of view of learning quickly abated. Schulrat Dröge's

wrinkled fore-finger no longer paused on the lines, he had done his

work; and during the lessons as well as while correcting his written

work Professor Kürtchen seized every opportunity of showing his tact.

One day, quite soon after the institution had started--it was after

luncheon in the high-windowed dining-room--he summoned Klaus Heinrich

into his study, and said in so many words: "It is contrary to the public

interest that your Grand Ducal Highness, during our scientific studies

together, should be compelled to answer questions which are at the

moment unwelcome to you. On the other hand, it is desirable that your

Grand Ducal Highness should continually announce your readiness to

answer by holding up your hand. I beg your Grand Ducal Highness

accordingly, for my own information, in the case of unwelcome questions,

to stretch out your arm to its full length, but in the case of those an

invitation to answer which would be agreeable to you, to raise it only

half way and in a right angle."

As for Doctor Ueberbein, he filled the schoolroom with a noisy flow of

words, whose cheerfulness disguised the teacher's object without losing

sight of it altogether. He had come to no sort of understanding with

Klaus Heinrich, but questioned him when it occurred to him to do so, in

a free and friendly way without causing him any embarrassment. And Klaus

Heinrich's by no means apropos answers seemed to enchant Doctor

Ueberbein, to inspire him with warm enthusiasm. "Ha, ha," he would cry

and throw his head back laughing. "Oh, Klaus Heinrich! Oh, scion of

princes! Oh, your innocency! The crude problems of life have caught you

unprepared! Now then, it is for me with my experience to put you

straight." And he gave the answer himself, asked nobody else, when Klaus

Heinrich had answered wrong. The mode of instruction of the other

teachers bore the character of an unassuming lecture. And

gymnastic-instructor Zotte had received orders from high quarters to

conduct the physical exercises with every regard to Klaus Heinrich's

left hand--so strictly that the attention of the Prince himself or of

his companions should never be drawn unnecessarily to his little

failing. So the exercises were limited to running games, and during the

riding lessons, which Herr Zotte also gave, all feats of daring were

rigorously excluded.

Klaus Heinrich's relations with his comrades were not what one might

call intimate, they did not extend to actual familiarity. He stood for

himself, was never one of them, by no means counted amongst their

number. They were five and he was one; the Prince, the five, and the

teachers, that was the establishment. Several things stood in the way of

a free friendship. The five were there on Klaus Heinrich's account, they

were ordered to associate with him; when during the lessons he answered

wrong they were not asked to correct him, they had to adjust themselves

to his capacity when riding or playing. They were too often reminded of

the advantages they gained by being allowed to share his life. Some of

them, the young von Gumplach, von Platow, and von Wehrzahn, sons of

country squires of moderate means, were oppressed the whole time by the

gratified pride their parents had shown when the invitation from the

House Minister reached them, by the congratulations which had poured in

from every side.

Count Prenzlau on the other hand, that thick-set, red-haired, freckled

youth with the breathless way of speaking and the Christian name

Bogumil, was a sprig of the richest and noblest family of landowners in

the land, spoilt and self-conscious. He was well aware that his parents

had not been able to refuse Baron von Knobelsdorff's invitation, but

that it had not seemed to them by any means a blessing from the clouds,

and that he, Count Bogumil, could have lived much better and more in

accordance with his position on his father's property than at the

"Pheasantry." He found the hacks bad, the landau shabby, and the

dog-cart old-fashioned; he grumbled privately over the food.

Dagobert Count Trümmerhauff, a spare, greyhound-looking youth, who spoke

in a whisper, was inseparable from him. They had a word among themselves

which fully expressed their critical and aristocratic bent, and which

they constantly uttered in a biting tone of voice: "hog-wash." It was

hog-wash to have loose collars buttoning on to one's shirt. It was

hog-wash to play lawn-tennis in one's ordinary clothes.

But Klaus Heinrich felt himself unequal to using the word. He had not

hitherto been aware that there were such things as shirts with collars

sewed on to them and that people could possess so many changes of

clothes at one time as Bogumil Prenzlau. He would have liked to say

"hog-wash," but it occurred to him that he was wearing at that very time

darned socks. He felt inelegant by the side of Prenzlau and coarse

compared with Trümmerhauff. Trümmerhauff had the nobility of a wild

beast. He had a long pointed nose with a sharp bridge and broad,

quivering, thin-walled nostrils, blue veins on his delicate temples and

small ears without lobes. He wore broad coloured cuffs fastened with

gold links, and his hands were like those of a dainty woman, with

filbert nails; a gold bracelet adorned one of his wrists. He half closed

his eyes as he whispered.... No, it was obvious that Klaus Heinrich

could not compete with Trümmerhauff in elegance. His right hand was

rather broad, he had cheek-bones like the men in the street, and he

looked quite stumpy by Dagobert's side. It was quite possible that

Albrecht might have been better qualified to join the "Pheasants" in

their use of "hog-wash." Klaus Heinrich for his part was no aristocrat,

absolutely none, unmistakable facts showed that. For consider his name,

Klaus Heinrich, that's what the shoemaker's sons were called all over

the place. Herr Stavenüter's children over the road too, who blew their

noses with their fingers, bore the same names as himself, his parents,

and his brother. But the lordlings were called Bogumil and

Dagobert--Klaus Heinrich stood solitary and alone among the five.

However, he formed one friendship at the "Pheasantry," and it was with

Doctor Ueberbein. The Usher Raoul Ueberbein was not a handsome man. He

had a red beard and a greenish-white complexion with watery blue eyes,

thin red hair, and unusually ugly, protruding, sharp-pointed ears. But

his hands were small and delicate. He wore white ties exclusively, which

gave him rather a distinguished appearance, although his wardrobe was

scanty. He wore a long great-coat out-of-doors, and when riding--for Dr.

Ueberbein rode, and excellently well too--a worn-out frock-coat whose

skirts he fastened up with safety-pins, tight buttoned breeches, and a

high hat.

Where lay the attraction he exercised on Klaus Heinrich? That attraction

was very composite. The "Pheasants" had not been long together before a

report went about that the usher had dragged a child a long time ago, in

circumstances of extreme peril, out of a swamp or bog, and was the

possessor of a medal for saving life. That was one impression. Later

other details of Doctor Ueberbein's life came to be known, and Klaus

Heinrich too heard of them. It was said that his origin was obscure,

that he had no father, his mother had been an actress who had paid some

poor people to adopt him, and that he had once been starved, which

accounted for the greenish tint of his complexion. These were things

which did not bear being brought into the light or even being thought

of, wild, remote things, to which, however, Doctor Ueberbein himself

sometimes alluded--when, for instance, the lordlings, who could not

forget his obscure origin, behaved impudently or unbecomingly towards

him.

"Suck-a-thumbs and mammy's darlings!" he would say then in loud dudgeon.

"I've knocked about long enough to deserve some respect from you young

gentlemen!" This fact too, that Doctor Ueberbein had "knocked about,"

did not fail of effect on Klaus Heinrich. But the especial charm of the

doctor's person lay in the directness of his attitude towards Klaus

Heinrich, the tone in which he addressed him from the very beginning,

and which distinguished him clearly from everybody else. There was

nothing about him which reminded one of the stiff reticence of the

lackeys, of the governess's pale horror, of Schulrat Dröge's

professional bows, or of Professor Kürtchen's self-satisfied deference.

There was nothing about him to recall the strange, loyal, and yet

impertinent way in which people outside stared at Klaus Heinrich.

During the first few days after the seminary assembled, he kept silence

and confined himself to observation, but then he approached the Prince

with a jovial and cheery frankness, a fresh fatherly camaraderie such as

Klaus Heinrich had never before experienced. It disturbed him at first,

he looked in terror at the doctor's green face; but his confusion found

no echo in the doctor, and in no way discouraged him, it confirmed him

in his hearty bumptious ingenuousness, and it was not long before Klaus

Heinrich was warmed and won, for there was nothing vulgar, nothing

degrading, not even anything designed and school-masterish in Doctor

Ueberbein's methods--all they showed was the superiority of a man who

had knocked about the world, and, at the same time, his tender and open

respect for Klaus Heinrich's different birth and position; they showed

affection and recognition, at the same time as the cheerful offer of a

league between their two different kinds of existence. He called him

"Highness" once or twice, then simply "Prince," then quite simply "Klaus

Heinrich." And he stuck to the last.

When the "Pheasants" went out for a ride, these two rode at the head,

the doctor on his stout piebald to the left of Klaus Heinrich on his

docile chestnut--trotted when snow or leaves were falling, through

springtime thaws or summer heat, along the edge of the woodlands across

country, or through the villages, while Doctor Ueberbein related

anecdotes of his life. Raoul Ueberbein sounds funny, doesn't it? The

very reverse of _chic_. Yes, Ueberbein had been the name of his adoptive

parents, a poor, oldish couple of the inferior bank-clerk class, and he

had a quite legal right to it. But that he should be called Raoul had

been the decision and mandate of his mother, when she handed over the

sum agreed on, together with his fateful little person, to the others--a

sentimental decision obviously, a decision prompted by piety. At least

it was quite possible that his legal and real father had been called

Raoul, and it was to be hoped that his surname had been something which

harmonized with it.

For the rest, it had been rather a wild undertaking on the part of his

adoptive parents to adopt a child, for "Barmecide had been cook" in the

Ueberbein establishment, and it was obvious that it had been only the

most urgent necessity which had made them jump at the money. The boy had

been given only the scantiest of school educations, but he had taken the

liberty of showing what he was made of, had distinguished himself to

some extent, and as he was keen to become a teacher, he had been granted

out of a public fund the means of obtaining a college education. Well,

he had finished his college course not without distinction, as indeed it

was expected of him that he should, and he had then been appointed a

teacher in a public elementary school, with a good salary, out of which

he had managed to give occasional doles by way of gratitude to his

honest adoptive parents, until they died almost simultaneously. And a

happy release it was for them!

And so he had been left alone in the world, his very birth a misfortune,

as poor as a sparrow and endowed by Providence with a green face and

dog's ears by way of personal recommendations. Attractive

qualifications, were they not? But such qualifications were really

favourable ones--once for all, so they proved. A miserable boyhood,

loneliness and exclusion from good fortune and all that good fortune

brings, a never-ceasing, imperious call to be up and doing, no fear of

getting fat and lazy, one's moral fibre was braced, one could never rest

on one's oars, but must be always overhauling and passing others. Could

anything be more stimulating, when the hard facts were brought home to

one? What a handicap over others who "were not obliged to" to the same

extent! People who could smoke cigars in the morning....

At that time, by the bedside of one of his unwashed little pupils, in a

room which did not smell exactly of spring blossoms, Raoul Ueberbein had

made friends with a young man--some years older than he, but in a

similar position and like him ill-fated by birth in so far as he was a

Jew. Klaus Heinrich knew him--indeed, he might be said to have got to

know him on a very intimate occasion. Sammet was his name, a doctor of

medicine; he happened by chance to have been in the Grimmburg when Klaus

Heinrich was born, and had set up a couple of years later in the capital

as a children's doctor. Well, he had been a friend of Ueberbein's, still

was one, and they had had many a good talk about fate and duty. What is

more, they had both knocked about the world.

Ueberbein, for his part, looked back with sincere pleasure to the time

when he had been an elementary teacher. His activities had not been

entirely confined to the class-room, he had amused himself by showing

also some personal and human concern for his charges' welfare, by

visiting them at home, by sharing at times their not too idyllic family

life, and in doing so he did not fail to bring away impressions of a

most varied kind. In truth, if he had not already tasted the bitterness

of the cup of life, he would have had plenty of opportunity then to do

so. For the rest, he had not ceased to work by himself, had given

private lessons to plump tradesmen's sons, and tightened his waist belt

so as to save enough to buy books with--had spent the long, still, and

free nights in study. And one day he had passed the State examination

with exceptional distinction, had soon received his promotion, had been

transferred to a grammar school. As a matter of fact, it had been a sore

grief to him to leave his little charges, but so the fates willed. And

then it had so happened that he had been chosen to be usher at the

"Pheasantry," for all that his very birth had been a misfortune.

* * * * *

That was Doctor Ueberbein's story, and Klaus Heinrich, as he listened to

it, was filled with friendly feelings. He shared his contempt for those

who "weren't obliged to" and smoked cigars in the morning, he felt a

fearful joy when Ueberbein talked in his jolly blustering way about

"knocking about," "impressions," and the bitterness of the cup of life,

and he felt as if he had been personally an actor in the scenes as he

followed his luckless and gallant career from his adoption up to his

appointment as grammar-schoolmaster. He felt as if he were in some

general sort of way qualified to take part in a conversation about fate

and duty. His attitude of reserve relaxed, the experiences of his own

fifteen years of life came crowding in upon him, he felt a longing

himself to retail confidences, and he tried to tell Doctor Ueberbein all

about himself.

But the funny thing was that Doctor Ueberbein himself checked him,

opposed any such intention most decidedly. "No, no, Klaus Heinrich," he

said; "full stop there! No confidences, if you please! Not but that I

know that you have all sorts of things to tell me.... I need only watch

you for half a day to see that, but you quite misunderstand me if you

think I'm likely to encourage you to weep round my neck. In the first

place, sooner or later you'd repent it. But in the second, the pleasures

of a confidential intimacy are not for the likes of you. You see,

there's no harm in my chattering. What am I? An usher. Not a common or

garden one, in my own opinion, but still no better than such. Just a

categorical unit. But you? What are you? That's harder to say.... Let's

say a conception, a kind of ideal. A frame. An emblematical existence,

Klaus Heinrich, and at the same time a formal existence. But formality

and intimacy--haven't you yet learnt that the two are mutually

exclusive? Absolutely exclusive. You have no right to intimate

confidences, and if you attempted them you yourself would discover that

they did not suit you, would find them inadequate and insipid. I must

remind you of your duty, Klaus Heinrich."

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

On another occasion Doctor Ueberbein said casually: "Popularity is a not

very profound, but a grand and comprehensive kind of familiarity." And

that was all he said on the subject.

Sometimes in summer, during the long intervals between the morning

lessons, they would sit together in the empty pavilion, or stroll about

the "Pheasants" playground, discussing various topics, and breaking off

to drink lemonade provided by Herr Stavenüter. Herr Stavenüter beamed as

he wiped the rough table and brought the lemonade with his own hands.

The glass ball in the bottle-neck had to be pushed in. "Sound stuff!"

said Herr Stavenüter. "The best that can be got. No muck, Grand Ducal

Highness, and you, doctor, but just sweetened fruit-juice. I can

honestly recommend it!"

Then he made his children sing in honour of the visit. There were three

of them, two girls and a boy, and they could sing trios. They stood some

way off with the green leaves of the chestnut trees for roof, and sang

folk-songs while they blew their noses with their fingers. Once they

sang a song beginning: "We are all but mortal men," and Doctor Ueberbein

took advantage of the pauses to express his disapproval of this number

on the programme. "A paltry song," he said, and leaned over towards

Klaus Heinrich. "A really commonplace song, a lazy song, Klaus Heinrich;

you must not let it appeal to you."

Later, when the children had stopped singing, he returned to the song

and described it as "sloppy." "We are all but mortal men," he repeated.

"God bless us, yes, no doubt we are. But on the other hand we ought

perhaps to remember that it is those of us who count for most who may be

the occasion for especially emphasizing this truth.... Look you," he

said, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other, while he stroked

his beard up from underneath his chin, "look you, Klaus Heinrich, a man

who has my intellectual aspirations will not be able to help searching

for and clinging to whatever is out of the ordinary in this drab world

of ours, wherever and however it appears--he cannot help being put out

by such a slovenly song, by such a sheepish abjuration of the

exceptional, of the lofty and of the miserable, and of that which is

both at once. You may well say: 'That's talking for effect.' I'm only an

usher, but there's something in my blood, Heaven knows what--I can't

find any pleasure in emphasizing the fact that we are all ushers at

bottom. I love the extraordinary in every form and in every sense. I

love those who are conscious of the dignity of their exceptional

station, the marked men, those one can see are not as other men, all

those whom the people stare at open-mouthed--I hope they'll appreciate

their destiny, and I do not wish them to make themselves comfortable

with the slip-shod and luke-warm truth which we have just heard set to

music for three voices. Why have I become your tutor, Klaus Heinrich? I

am a gipsy, a hard-working one, maybe, but still a born gipsy. My

predestination to the rôle of squire of princes is not particularly

obvious. Why did I gladly obey the call when it came to me, in view of

my energy, and although my very birth was a misfortune? Because, Klaus

Heinrich, I see in your existence the clearest, most express, and

best-preserved form of the extraordinary in the world. I have become

your tutor that I might keep your destiny alive in you. Reserve,

etiquette, obligation, duty, demeanour, formality--has the man whose

life is surrounded by these no right to despise others? Ought he to

allow himself to be reminded of humanity and good nature? No, come

along, let's go, Klaus Heinrich, if you don't mind. They're tactless

brats, these little Stavenüters." Klaus Heinrich laughed, he gave the

children some of his pocket-money, and they went.

"Yes, yes," said Doctor Ueberbein in the course of an ordinary walk in

the woods to Klaus Heinrich--they had drifted a little distance away

from the five "Pheasants"--"nowadays the soul's thirst for veneration

has to be satisfied with what it can get. Where will you find greatness?

I only hope you may! But quite apart from all actual greatness and

high-calling, there is always what I call Highness, select and sadly

isolated forms of life, towards which an attitude of the tenderest

sympathy should be adopted. For the rest, greatness is strong, it wears

jack-boots, it has no need of the knight-services of the mind. But

Highness is affecting--damme if it isn't the most affecting thing on

earth."

Once or twice a year the "Pheasantry" journeyed to the capital to attend

performances of classical operas and dramas in the Grand Ducal Court

Theatre; Klaus Heinrich's birthday in particular was the signal for a

visit to the theatre. He would then sit quietly in his carved arm-chair,

leaning against the red plush ledge of the Court box, whose roof rested

on the heads of two female figures with crossed hands and empty stern

faces, and watched his colleagues, the princes, whose destinies were

played out on the stage, while he stood the fire of the opera-glasses

which from time to time, even during the play, were directed at him from

the audience. Professor Kürtchen sat on his left hand and Doctor

Ueberbein with the "Pheasants" in an adjoining box.

Once they heard the "Magic Flute," and on the way home to "Pheasantry"

station, in the first-class carriage, Doctor Ueberbein made the whole

collection of them laugh by imitating the way in which singers talk when

their rôles oblige them to talk in prose. "He is a prince!" he said with

pathos, and answered himself in a drawly, sing-song parsonical voice.

"He is more than that, he is a man!" Even Professor Kürtchen was so much

amused that he bleated.

But next day, in the course of a private lesson in Klaus Heinrich's

study, with the round mahogany table, whitened ceiling, and Greek bust

on the stove, Doctor Ueberbein repeated his parody, and said then:

"Great heavens, that was something new in its time, it was a piece of

news, a startling truth! There are paradoxes which have stood so long on

their heads that one has to put them on their feet to make anything even

moderately daring out of them, 'He is a man. He is more than that'--that

is getting gradually bolder, prettier, even truer. The converse is mere

humanity, but I have no hearty love for humanity, I'm quite content to

leave it out of account. One must, in a certain sense, be one of those

of whom the people say: 'They are, after all, mortal men too'--or one is

as deadly dull as an usher. I cannot honestly wish for the general

comfortable obliteration of conflicts and gulfs, that's the way I am

made, for better or worse, and the idea of the _principe uomo_ is to me,

to speak plainly, an abomination. I am not anxious that it should

particularly appeal to you.... Look you, there have always been princes

and exceptional persons who live their life of exception with a light

heart, simply unconscious of their dignity or denying it outright, and

capable of playing skittles with the townsfolk in their shirt-sleeves,

without the slightest attempt at an inward qualm. But they are not very

important, just as nothing is important which lacks mind. For mind,

Klaus Heinrich, mind is the tutor which insists inexorably on dignity,

indeed actually creates dignity, it is the arch-enemy and chief

antagonist of all human good nature. 'More than that?' No! to be a

representative, to stand for a number when one appears to be the exalted

and refined expression of a multitude. Representing is naturally

something more and higher than simply Being, Klaus Heinrich--and that's

why people call you Highness."

So argued Doctor Ueberbein, in loud, hearty, and fluent terms, and what

he said influenced Klaus Heinrich's mind and susceptibilities more,

perhaps, than was desirable. The prince was then about fifteen years

old, and therefore quite competent, if not properly to understand, yet

to imbibe the essence of ideas of that sort. The main point was that

Doctor Ueberbein's doctrines and apophthegms were so exceptionally

supported by his personality.

When Schulrat Dröge, the man who used to bow to the lackeys, reminded

Klaus Heinrich of his "exalted calling," that was nothing more than an

exaggerated form of speech, devoid of inner meaning and calculated

mainly to add emphasis to his professional claims. But when Doctor

Ueberbein, whose very birth had been a misfortune, as he said, and who

had a green complexion because he had been half starved; when this man

who had dragged a child out of a bog, who had received "impressions" and

"knocked about" in all sorts of ways; when he who not only did not bow

to the lackeys, but who bawled at them in strident tones when the fancy

took him, and who had called Klaus Heinrich himself straight out by his

Christian names when he had known him only three days, without asking

leave to do so,--when he with a paternal laugh declared that Klaus

Heinrich's "path lay among the heights of mankind" (a favourite

expression of his), the effect was a feeling of freedom and originality

which awoke an echo deep down in the prince's soul.

When Klaus Heinrich listened to the doctor's loud and jolly anecdotes of

his life, of the "bitterness of the cup of life," he felt as he used to

when he went rummaging with Ditlinde his sister, and that the man who

could tell such anecdotes, that this "rolling stone," as he called

himself, did not, like the others, adopt a reserved and deferential

attitude towards him, but, without prejudice to a free and cheerful

homage, treated him as a comrade in fate and destiny, warmed Klaus

Heinrich's heart to inexpressible gratitude and completed the charm

which bound him to the usher for ever....

Shortly after his sixteenth birthday (Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, was

at the time in the South for his health) the Prince was confirmed,

together with the five "Pheasants," in the Court Church. The _Courier_

reported the fact without making any sensation of it. Dom Wislezenus,

the President of the High Consistory, treated a Bible text in

counterpoint, this time to the choice of the Grand Duke, and Klaus

Heinrich was on this occasion gazetted a Lieutenant, although he had not

the foggiest notion of things military.... His existence was becoming

more and more barren of _expertise_. The ceremonial of the confirmation

also lacked incisive significance, and the Prince returned immediately

afterwards quietly back to the "Pheasantry" to continue his life amongst

his tutors and schoolfellows without any alteration.

* * * * *

It was not till one year later that he left his old-fashioned homely

schoolroom with the torso on the stove; the seminary was broken up, and

while his five noble comrades were transferred to the Corps of Cadets,

Klaus Heinrich again took up his abode in the Old Schloss, intending, in

accordance with an agreement which Herr von Knobelsdorff had come to

with the Grand Duke, to spend a year at the upper gymnasium classes in

the capital. This was a well-calculated and popular step, which however

did not make much difference from the point of view of _expertise_.

Professor Kürtchen had gone back to his post at the public academy, he

instructed Klaus Heinrich as before in several branches of knowledge,

and showed even greater zeal than he had at the seminary, being

determined to let everybody see how tactful he was. It also appeared

that he had told the rest of the staff of the agreement reached with

regard to the two ways in which the Prince should announce his feelings

with regard to answering a question.

As to Doctor Ueberbein, who had also returned to the academy, he had not

yet advanced so far in his unusual career as to teach the highest class.

But at Klaus Heinrich's lively, even insistent request, preferred by him

to the Grand Duke, not by word of mouth but by official channels, so to

speak, through the benevolent Herr von Knobelsdorff, the usher was

appointed tutor and superintendent of home studies, came daily to the

Schloss, bawled at the lackeys, and had every opportunity of working on

the Prince with his intellectual and enthusiastic talk. Perhaps it was

partly the fault of this influence that Klaus Heinrich's relations with

the young people with whom he shared the much-hacked school-benches

continued even looser and more distant than his connexion with the five

at the "Pheasantry"; and if thus the popularity which this year was

intended to secure was not attained, the intervals, which both in summer

and in winter were spent by all the scholars in the roomy paved

courtyard, offered opportunities for camaraderie.

But these intervals, intended to refresh the ordinary scholars, brought

with them for Klaus Heinrich the first actual effort of the kind of

which his life was to be full. He was naturally, at least during the

first term, the cynosure of every eye in the play-ground--no easy matter

for him, in view of the fact that here the surroundings deprived him of

every external support and attribute of dignity, and he was obliged to

play on the same pavement as those whose common idea was to stare at

him. The little boys, full of childlike irresponsibility, hung about

close to him and gaped, while the bigger ones hovered around with

wide-open eyes and looked at him out of the corners of them or from

under their eyelids.... The excitement dwindled in course of time, but

even then--whether the fault was Klaus Heinrich's or the others'--even

later the camaraderie somehow did not make much progress. One might see

the prince, on the right of the head master or the usher-in-charge,

followed and surrounded by the curious, strolling up and down the

courtyard. One could see him, too, chatting with his schoolfellows.

What a charming sight it was! There he leaned, half-sitting on the slope

of the glazed-brick wall, with his feet crossed, and his left hand

thrust far behind on his hips, with the fifteen members of the first

class in a half-circle round him. There were only fifteen this year, for

the last promotions had been made with the object in view that the

select should contain no elements which were unfitted by origin or

personality to be for a year on Christian-name terms with Klaus

Heinrich. For the use of Christian names was ordered. Klaus Heinrich

conversed with one of them, who had advanced a little towards him out of

the semicircle, and answered him with little short bows. Both laughed,

everybody laughed directly they began to talk to Klaus Heinrich. He

asked him for instance: "Have you yet done your German essay for next

Tuesday?"

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

part."

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

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

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

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

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

Murmurs of amusement and gratification in the semicircle. Klaus Heinrich

turned to another schoolfellow, and the first stepped quickly back.

Everybody felt that the really important point was not the essay nor the

arithmetic, but the conversation as an event and an undertaking, one's

attitude and tone, the way one advanced or retired, the success with

which one assumed a sympathetic, self-collected, and refined demeanour.

Perhaps it was the consciousness of this which brought the smile to

everybody's lips.

Sometimes, when he had the semicircle in front of him, Klaus Heinrich

would say some such words as "Professor Nicolovius looks an owl."

Great then was the merriment among the others. Such a remark was the

signal for general unbending, they kicked over the traces, "Ho, ho,

ho!" 'd in chorus in their newly cracked voices, and one would declare

Klaus Heinrich to be a "ripping chap." But Klaus Heinrich did not often

say such things, he only said them when he saw the smile on the others'

faces grow faint and wan, and signs of boredom or even of impatience

showing themselves; he said them by way of cheering them up, and at the

extravagant laughter by which they were followed he wore a look half of

curiosity, half of dismay.

It was not Anselm Schickedanz who called him a "ripping chap," and yet

it was directly on his account that Klaus Heinrich had compared

Professor Nicolovius to an owl. Anselm Schickedanz had laughed like the

others at the joke, but not in quite the same approving way, but with an

intonation which implied, "Gracious heavens!" He was a dark boy, with

narrow hips, who enjoyed the reputation throughout the school of being a

devil of a chap. The tone of the top class this year was admirable. The

obligations which membership of Klaus Heinrich's class entailed had been

impressed on every boy from various quarters, and Klaus Heinrich was not

the boy to tempt them to forget these obligations. But that Anselm

Schickedanz was a devil of a chap had often come to his ears, and Klaus

Heinrich, when he looked at him, felt a kind of satisfaction in

believing what he heard, although it was an obscure problem to him how

he could have come by his reputation.

He made several inquiries privately, broached the subject apparently by

chance, and tried to find out from one or other of his comrades

something about Schickedanz's devilry. He discovered nothing definite.

But the answers, whether disparaging or complimentary, filled him with

the suspicion of a mad amiability, an unlawful glorious humanity, which

was there for the eyes of all, save his own, to see--and this suspicion

was almost a sorrow. Everybody said at once, with reference to Anselm

Schickedanz, and in saying it dropped into the forbidden form of

address: "Yes, Highness, you ought to see him when you are not there!"

Klaus Heinrich would never see him when he was not there, would never

get near him, never get to know him. He stole peeps at him when he stood

with the others in a semicircle before him, laughing and braced up like

all the rest. Everybody braced himself up in Klaus Heinrich's presence,

his very existence was accountable for that, as he well knew, and he

would never see what Schickedanz was like, how he behaved when he let

himself go. At the thought he felt a twinge of envy, a tiny spark of

regret.

* * * * *

At this juncture something painful, in fact revolting, occurred, of

which nothing came to the ears of the Grand Ducal couple, because Doctor

Ueberbein kept his mouth closed and about which scarcely any rumour

spread in the capital because everybody who had had a share or any

responsibility in the matter, obviously from a kind of feeling of shame,

preserved strict silence about it. I refer to the improprieties which

occurred in connexion with Prince Klaus Heinrich's presence at that

year's citizens' ball, and in which a Fräulein Unschlitt, daughter of

the wealthy soap-boiler, was especially concerned.

The citizens' ball was a chronic fixture in the social life of the

capital, an official and at the same time informal festivity, which was

given by the city every winter in the "Townpark Hotel," a big, recently

enlarged and renovated establishment in the southern suburbs, and

provided the bourgeois circles with an opportunity of establishing

friendly relations with the Court. It was known that Johann Albrecht III

had never cultivated a taste for this civil and rather free-and-easy

entertainment, at which he appeared in a black frock-coat in order to

lead off the polonaise with the Lady Mayoress, and that he was wont to

withdraw from it at the earliest possible moment. This only heightened

the general satisfaction when his second son, although not yet bound to

do so, already made his appearance at the ball that year--indeed, it

became known that he did so at his own express request. It was said that

the Prince had employed Excellency von Knobelsdorff to transmit his

earnest wish to the Grand Duchess, who in her turn had contrived to

obtain her husband's consent.

Outwardly the festivity pursued its wonted course. The most

distinguished guests, Princess Catherine, in a coloured silk dress and

cap, accompanied by her red-haired children, Prince Lambert with his

pretty wife, and last of all Johann Albrecht and Dorothea with Prince

Klaus Heinrich, made their appearance in the "Townpark Hotel," greeted

by city officials, with long-ribboned rosettes pinned on their coats.

Several Ministers, aides-de-camp in mufti, numbers of men and women of

the Court, the leaders of society, as well as landowners from the

surrounding country, were present. In the big white hall the Grand Ducal

pairs first received a string of presentations, and then, to the strains

of the band which sat in the curved gallery up above, Johann Albrecht

with the Lady Mayoress, Dorothea with the Lord Mayor, opened the ball by

a procession round the room.

Then, while the polonaise gave place to a round dance, contentment

spread, cheeks glowed, the heat of the throng kindled feelings of

fondness, faintness, and foreboding among the dancers, the distinguished

guests stood as distinguished guests are wont to stand on such

occasions--apart and smiling graciously on the platform, at the top of

the hall under the gallery. From time to time Johann Albrecht engaged a

distinguished man, and Dorothea engaged his wife, in conversation. Those

addressed stepped quickly and smartly forward and back, kept their

distance half-bowing with their heads bent, nodded, shook their heads,

laughed in this attitude at the questions and remarks addressed to

them--answered eagerly on the spur of the moment, with sudden and

anticipatory changes from hearty amusement to the deepest earnestness,

with a passionateness which was doubtless unusual to them, and obviously

in a state of tension. Curious guests, still panting from the dance,

stood in a semicircle round and stared at these purposely trivial

conversations with a peculiarly tense expression on their faces.

Klaus Heinrich was the object of much attention. Together with two

red-headed cousins who were already in the army, but were wearing mufti

that evening, he kept a little behind his parents, resting on one leg,

his left hand placed far back on his hip, his face turned with his right

half-profile to the public. A reporter of the _Courier_ who had been

bidden to the ball made notes upon him in a corner. The Prince could be

seen to greet with his white-gloved right hand his tutor, Doctor

Ueberbein, who with his red beard and greenish tint came along the fence

of spectators; he was seen even to advance some way into the hall to

meet him.

The doctor, with big enamel studs in his shirt front, began by bowing

when Klaus Heinrich stretched out his hand to him, but then at once

spoke to him in his free and fatherly way. The Prince seemed to be

rejecting a proposal, and laughed uneasily as he did so, but then a

number of people distinctly heard Doctor Ueberbein say: "No--nonsense,

Klaus Heinrich, what was the good of learning? Why did the Swiss

governess teach you your steps in your tenderest years? I can't

understand why you go to balls if you won't dance? One, two, three,

we'll soon find you a partner!" And with a continual shower of

witticisms he presented to the Prince four or five young maidens, whom

he dropped on without ceremony and dragged forward. They ducked and shot

up again, one after the other, in the trailing fluctuations of the Court

curtsey, set their teeth and did their best. Klaus Heinrich stood with

his heels together and murmured, "Delighted, quite delighted."

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

"Yes, Grand Ducal Highness, we are having great fun," answered she in a

high chirping voice. She was a tall, rather bony bourgeoise maiden,

dressed in white muslin, with fair wavy hair dressed over a pad, and a

pretty face, a gold chain round her bare neck, the collar-bones of which

showed prominently, and big white hands in mittens. She added: "The

quadrille is coming next. Will your Grand Ducal Highness dance it with

me?"

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

He looked round. The machinery of the ball was already falling into

geometrical order. Lines were being drawn, squares were forming, couples

came forward and called to _vis-à-vis_. The music had not yet started.

Klaus Heinrich asked his cousins. Yes, they were taking part in the

lancers, they already had their lucky partners on their arms.

Klaus Heinrich was seen to go up behind his mother's red damask chair

and whisper something excitedly to her, whereupon she turned her lovely

neck and passed on the question to her husband, and the Grand Duke

nodded. And then some laughter was caused by the youthful impetuosity

with which the Prince ran down, so as not to miss the beginning of the

square dance.

The reporter of the _Courier_, notebook in one hand and pencil in the

other, peered with neck thrust forward over the hall out of his corner,

so as to make sure whom the Prince was going to engage. It was the fair,

tall girl, with the collar-bones and the big white hands, Fräulein

Unschlitt, the soap-boiler's daughter. She was still standing where

Klaus Heinrich had left her.

"Are you still there?" he said breathlessly.... "May I have the

pleasure? Come along!"

The sets were complete. They wandered about for a while without finding

a place. A man with a ribbon rosette hurried up, seized a pair of young

people by the shoulders and induced them to leave their stand under the

chandelier, that his Grand Ducal Highness might occupy it with Fräulein

Unschlitt. The band had been hesitating, it now struck up, the

prescribed compliments were exchanged, and Klaus Heinrich danced like

the rest of the world.

The doors into the next room stood open. In one of them was a buffet

with flower vases, punch bowls, and dishes of many-coloured cakes. The

dance extended right into this room, two sets were dancing in it. In the

other room some white-covered tables were arrayed, which were still

standing empty.

Klaus Heinrich stepped forwards and backwards, laughed to the others,

stretched out his hand and grasped theirs, and then again seized his

partner's big white hand, put his right arm round the maiden's

muslin-clad waist and revolved with her on their particular patch, while

he kept his left hand, which also wore a little white glove, on his hip.

They laughed and talked as they danced. The Prince made mistakes, forgot

himself, upset figures, and lost his place. "You must keep me straight!"

he said in the confusion. "I'm upsetting everything! Nudge me in the

ribs!" and the others gradually plucked up courage and set him right,

ordered him laughingly hither and thither, even laid their hands on him

and pushed him a little when necessary. The fair damsel with the

collar-bones was particularly zealous in pushing him about.

The spirits of the dancers rose with every figure. Their movements

became freer, their calls bolder, they began to stamp their feet and to

prance as they advanced and retired, while they held each other's hands

and balanced themselves with their arms. Klaus Heinrich too stamped, at

first only by way of signal, but soon more loudly; and as far as the

balancing with the arms was concerned, the fair maiden looked after that

when they advanced together. Also every time she danced facing him she

made an exaggerated scrape before him which much increased the

merriment.

The refreshment room was full of chatter and babble, which attracted

everybody's envious glances. Some one had left his set in the middle of

the dance, purloined a sandwich from the buffet, and was now chewing

away proudly as he swerved and stamped, to the amusement of the rest.

"What cheek!" said the fair maiden. "They don't stand on ceremony!" and

the idea gave her no peace. Before you could look round, she was off,

had dashed lightly and nimbly between the lines of dancers, had seized a

sandwich from the buffet and was back in her place.

Klaus Heinrich was the one who applauded her most heartily. His left

hand was a difficulty, and so he managed without it, while with his

right he beat on the top of his head and doubled up with laughter. Then

he became quieter and rather pale. He was struggling with himself....

The quadrille was nearing its end. What he meant to do he must do

quickly. They had already got to the grand chain.

And as he was already almost too late, he did what he had been

struggling with himself about. He broke away, ran swiftly through the

dancers, with muttered apologies when he collided with anybody, reached

the buffet, seized a sandwich, rushed back, and came sliding into his

set; that was not all, he put the sandwich--it was an egg and sardine

one--to the lips of his partner, the damsel with the big white hands;

she curtseyed a little, bit into it, bit almost half off without using

her hands, and throwing back his head he stuffed the rest into his

mouth!

The high spirits of the set found a vent in the grand chain, which was

just beginning. Right round the hall went the dancers, winding zig-zag

in and out and stretching out their hands. Then it stopped, the tide

turned, and once more the stream went round, laughing and chattering,

with mistakes and entanglements and hurriedly rectified complications.

Klaus Heinrich pressed the hands he grasped without knowing to whom they

belonged. He laughed and his chest heaved. His smoothly parted hair was

ruffled, and a bit fell over his forehead, his shirt-front bulged a

little out of his waistcoat, and in his face and sparkling eyes was that

look of tender emotion which is sometimes the expression of happiness.

He said several times during the chain, "What awful fun! What glorious

fun!" He met his cousins, and to them too he said, "We have had such

fun--in our set over there!"

Then came the clapping and au revoirs; the dance was over. Klaus

Heinrich again stood facing the fair maiden with the collar-bones, and

when the music changed time he once more put his arm round her tender

waist, and away they danced.

Klaus Heinrich did not steer well and often knocked into other couples,

because he kept his left hand planted on his hip, but he brought his

partner somehow or other to the entrance to the refreshment room, where

they called a halt and refreshed themselves with pineappleade which was

handed to them by the waiters. They sat just at the entrance on two

velvet stools, drank and chatted about the quadrille, the Citizens'

Ball, and other social functions in which the fair maiden had already

taken part that winter....

It was then that one of the suite, Major von Platow, the Grand Duke's

aide-de-camp, came up to Klaus Heinrich, bowed and begged leave to

announce that their Royal Highnesses were now going. He had been charged

... But Klaus Heinrich gave him to understand that he wished to remain,

in so emphatic a fashion that the aide-de-camp did not like to insist

upon his errand.

The Prince uttered exclamations of an almost rebellious regret and was

obviously bitterly grieved at the idea of going home at once. "We are

having such fun!" he said, stood up and gripped the Major's arm gently.

"Dear Major von Platow, please do intercede for me! Talk to Excellency

von Knobelsdorff, do anything you like--but to go now, when we are all

having such fun together! I'm sure my cousins are going to stay...." The

Major looked at the fair maiden with the big white hands, who smiled at

him; he too smiled and promised to do his best. This little scene was

enacted while the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess were already taking

leave of the city dignitaries at the entrance into the town park.

Immediately afterwards the dancing on the first floor began again.

The ball was at its height. Everything official had gone, and the king

of revelry came into his own. The white-covered tables in the adjoining

rooms were occupied by families drinking punch and eating supper. Youth

streamed to and fro, sitting excitedly and impatiently on the edges of

the chairs to eat a mouthful, drink a glass, and again plunge into the

merry throng. On the ground-floor there was an old-German beer-cellar,

which was crowded with the more sedate men. The big dancing-hall and the

buffet-room were by now monopolized by the dancers. The buffet-room was

filled with fifteen or sixteen young people, sons and daughters of the

city, among them Klaus Heinrich. It was a kind of private ball in there.

They danced to the music which floated in from the main hall.

Doctor Ueberbein, the Prince's tutor, was seen there for a minute or

two, having a short talk with his pupil. He was heard to mention, watch

in hand, Herr von Knobelsdorff's name, and to say that he was down in

the beer-cellar and was coming back to take the Prince away. Then he

went. The time was half-past ten. And while he sat below and conversed

with his friends over a tankard of beer, only for an hour or perhaps an

hour and a half, not more, those dreadful things, that simply incredible

scandal, happened in the buffet-room, to which it fell to him to put a

stop, though unfortunately too late.

The punch provided was weak, it contained more soda-water than

champagne, and if the young people lost their equilibrium it was more

the intoxication of the dance than of the wine. But in view of the

Prince's character and the solid bourgeois origin of the rest of the

company, that was not enough to explain what happened. Another, a

peculiar intoxication, was a factor here on both sides. The peculiar

thing was that Klaus Heinrich was fully conscious of each separate stage

in this intoxication, and yet had not the power or the will to shake it

off.

He was happy. He felt on his cheeks the same glow burning as he saw in

the faces of the others, and as his eyes, dazed by a soft mist,

travelled about the room, and rested admiringly on one fair form after

another, his look seemed to say: "We!" His mouth too said it--said, for

the pure joy of saying them, sentences in which a "We" occurred. "Shall

_we_ sit down? shall _we_ have another turn? shall _we_ have a drink?

shall _we_ make up two sets?" It was especially to the maiden with the

collar-bones that Klaus Heinrich made remarks with a "We" in them. He

had quite forgotten his left hand, it hung down, he felt so happy that

it did not worry him and he never thought of hiding it. Many saw now for

the first time what really was the matter with it, and looked curiously

on with an unconscious grimace at the thin, short arm in the sleeve, the

little, by now rather dirty white kid glove which covered the hand. But

as Klaus Heinrich was so careless about it, the others plucked up

courage, the result being that everybody took hold of the malformed hand

quite unconcernedly in the round or square dances.

He did not keep it back. He felt himself borne along, nay rather whirled

around by a feeling, a strong, wild feeling of contentment, that grew,

gathered heat from itself, possessed itself of him more and more

recklessly, overpowered him even more vehemently and breathlessly,

seemed to lift him triumphantly from the floor. What was happening? It

was difficult to say, difficult to be quite sure. The air was full of

words, detached cries, not spoken but expressed on the dancers' faces,

in their attitudes, in all they were doing and saying. "He must just

once! Bring him along, bring him along ...! Caught, caught!" A young

damsel with a turned-up nose, who asked him for a gallop when the

"leap-year" dance came, said quite clearly without any obvious

connexion, "Chucker up!" as she got ready to start off with him.

He saw pleasure in every eye, and saw that their pleasure lay in drawing

him out, in having him amongst them. In his happiness, his dream, to be

with them, amongst them, one of them, there obtruded itself from time to

time a cold, uncomfortable feeling that he was deluding himself, that

the warm, glorious "We" was deceiving him, that he did not really blend

in with them, that he was all the time the centre and object of the

show, but in a different and more unsatisfactory way than before. They

were his enemies to a certain extent, he saw it in the malice of their

eyes. He heard as if at a distance, with a peculiar dismay, how the fair

damsel with the big white hands called him simply by his names--and he

felt that she did so in quite a different spirit to that of Doctor

Ueberbein when he did the same. She had the right and the permission to

do so, in a certain manner, but was nobody here then jealous for his

dignity, if he himself was not? It seemed to him that they plucked at

his coat, and sometimes in their excitement made wild, sneering remarks

about him. A tall, fair young man with pince-nez, with whom he collided

while dancing, said quite loud so that everybody could hear it: "Now

then, clumsy!" And there was malice in the way in which the fair young

maiden, her arm in his and a grin on her lips, whirled round with him

till he was ready to drop with giddiness. While they whirled he gazed

with swimming eyes at the collar-bones showing under the white, rather

rough skin on her neck.

They fell; they had gone too hard at it and tumbled when they tried to

stop revolving, and over them stumbled a second pair, not entirely by

themselves, but rather at a push from the tall young man with pince-nez.

There was a scrimmage on the floor, and Klaus Heinrich heard above him

in the room the chorus which came back to him from the school-playground

when he had ventured on a rather daring joke by way of amusing his

fellows--a "Ho, ho, ho!" only it sounded more wicked and bolder here....

When shortly after midnight, unfortunately a little behind time, Doctor

Ueberbein appeared on the threshold of the buffet-room, this is what he

saw: His young pupil was sitting alone on the green plush sofa by the

left-hand wall, his clothes all disarranged and himself decorated in an

extraordinary way. A quantity of flowers, which had previously adorned

the buffet in two Chinese vases, were stuck in the opening of his

waistcoat, between the studs of his shirtfront, even in his collar;

round his neck lay the gold chain which belonged to the maiden with the

collar-bones, and on his head the flat metal cover of a punch-bowl was

balanced like a hat. He kept saying, "What are you doing? What are you

doing ...?" while the dancers, hand-in-hand in a semicircle, danced a

round dance backwards and forwards in front of him with half-suppressed

giggles, whispers, smirks, and ho, ho, ho's.

An unusual and unnatural flush mantled in Doctor Ueberbein's face. "Stop

it! Stop it!" he cried in his resonant voice, and, in the silence,

consternation, and dismay which at once ensued, he walked with long

strides up to the Prince, tore away the flowers in two or three grasps,

threw the chain and the cover away, then bowed and said with a stern

look, "May I beg your Grand Ducal Highness ...

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

Klaus Heinrich left the Citizens' Ball in his company.

That was the painful event which happened during Klaus Heinrich's year

at school. As I have said, none of the participators talked about it;

even to the Prince, Doctor Ueberbein did not mention the subject for

years afterwards, and, as nobody crystallized the event in words, it

remained incorporeal and promptly faded away, at least apparently, into

oblivion.

* * * * *

The Citizens' Ball had taken place in January. Shrove Tuesday, with the

Court Ball and the big Court in the Old Schloss, which wound up the

social year--regulation festivities, to which Klaus Heinrich was not yet

admitted--were past and over. Then came Easter, and with it the close of

the school year. Klaus Heinrich's diploma examination, that edifying

formality, in the course of which the question, "You agree, do you not,

Grand Ducal Highness?" was constantly recurring on the lips of the

Professor, and at which the Prince acquitted himself admirably in his

very conspicuous position. This was not a very important phase in his

life. Klaus Heinrich continued to live in the capital, but after

Whitsuntide his eighteenth birthday drew near, and with it a complex of

festivities which marked a serious turning-point in his life, and which

taxed him severely for days together.

He had attained his majority, had been pronounced to be of age. For the

first time again since his baptism, he was the centre of attention and

chief actor in a great ceremony, but while he had then quietly,

irresponsibly, and patiently resigned himself to the formalities which

surrounded and protected him, it was incumbent on him on this day, in

the midst of binding prescriptions and stern regulations, hemmed in by

the drapery of weighty precedent, to inspire the spectators and to

please them by maintaining an attitude of dignity and good-breeding, and

at the same time to appear light-hearted.

It may be added that I use the word "drapery" not only as a figure of

speech. The Prince wore a crimson mantle on this occasion, a sumptuous

and theatrical article of raiment, which his father and grandfather

before him had worn at their coming-of-age, and which notwithstanding

days of airing, still smelt of camphor. The crimson mantle had

originally belonged to the robes of the Knights of the Grimmburg

Griffin, but was now nothing more than a ceremonial garb for the use of

princes attaining their majority. Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, had never

worn the family one. As his birthday fell in the winter, he always spent

it in the South, in a place with a warm and dry climate, whither he was

thinking of returning this autumn too, and as at the time of his

eighteenth birthday his health had not permitted him to travel home, it

had been decided to declare him officially of age in his absence, and to

dispense with the Court ceremony.

As to Klaus Heinrich, there was only one opinion, especially among the

representatives of the public, that the mantle suited him admirably, and

he himself, notwithstanding the way in which it hampered his movements,

found it a blessing, as it made it easy for him to hide his left hand.

Between the canopied bed and the bellying chest of drawers in his

bedroom, that was situated on the second floor looking out on the yard

with the rose-bush, he made himself ready for the show, carefully and

precisely, with the help of his valet, Neumann, a quiet and precise man

who had been recently attached to him as keeper of his wardrobe and

personal servant.

Neumann was an ex-barber, and was filled, especially in the direction of

his original calling, with that passionate conscientiousness, that

insatiable knowledge of the ideal, which gives rise to the highest

skill. He did not shave like any ordinary shaver, he was not content to

leave no stubble behind, he shaved in such a way that every shadow of a

beard, every recollection of one, was removed, and without hurting the

skin he managed to restore to it all its softness and smoothness. He cut

Klaus Heinrich's hair exactly square above the ears, and arranged it

with all the assiduity required, in his opinion, by this preparation for

the Prince's ceremonial appearance. He managed that the parting should

come over the left eye and run slanting back over the crown of the head,

so that no tufts or wisps should stick up on it; he brushed the hair on

the right side up from the forehead into a prim crest on which no hat or

helmet could make an impression. Then Klaus Heinrich, with his help,

squeezed himself carefully into his uniform of lieutenant in the

Grenadier Guards, whose high-braided collar and tight fit favoured a

dignified bearing, put on the lemon-coloured silk band and the flat gold

chain of the House Order, and went down to the picture gallery where the

members of the family and the foreign relations of the Grand Ducal pair

were waiting. The Court was waiting in the adjoining Hall of the

Knights, and it was there that Johann Albrecht himself invested his son

with the crimson mantle.

Herr von Bühl zu Bühl had marshalled a procession, the ceremonial

procession from the Hall of the Knights to the Throne-room. It had cost

him no little worry. The composition of the Court made it difficult to

contrive an impressive arrangement, and Herr von Bühl especially

lamented the lack of upper Court officials, which on such occasions made

itself most severely felt. The Royal Mews had recently been put under

Herr von Bühl, and he felt himself quite up to his various functions,

but he asked everybody how he could be expected to make a good

impression, when the most important posts were filled simply by the

master of the Buck-hounds, von Stieglitz, and the director of the Grand

Ducal Theatre, a gouty general.

While he, in his capacity as Lord Marshal, Chief Master of the

Ceremonies, and House Marshal, in his embroidered clothes and brown

toupée, covered with orders and with his golden pince-nez on his nose,

came waddling and planting his long staff in front of him behind the

cadets, who, dressed as pages, and their hair parted over the left eye,

opened the procession, he pondered deeply over what came behind him. A

few chamberlains--not many, for some were wanted for the end of the

procession--their plumed hats under their arms and the Key on their

coat-tails, followed close at his heels, in silk stockings. Next came

Herr von Stieglitz, and the limping theatre-director in front of Klaus

Heinrich, who, in his mantle between the exalted couple, and followed by

his brother and sister, Albrecht and Ditlinde, formed the actual nucleus

of the procession.

Behind their Highnesses came von Knobelsdorff, the House Minister and

President of Council, his eye-wrinkles all at work; a little knot of

aides-de-camp and palace ladies came next: General Count Schmettern and

Major von Platow, a Count Trümmerhauff, cousin of the Keeper of the

Privy Purse, as military aide-de-camp of the Heir Apparent, and the

Grand Duchess's women led by the short-winded Baroness von

Schulenburg-Tressen. Then followed, attended and followed by

aides-de-camp, chamberlains, and Court ladies, Princess Catherine, with

her red-haired progeny, Prince Lambert with his lovely wife, and the

foreign relations or their representatives. Pages brought up the rear.

Thus they went at a measured pace from the Hall of the Knights through

the Gala Halls, the Hall of the Twelve Months, and the Marble Hall into

the Throne-room. Lackeys, with red-gold aiguillettes on their brown

coats, stood theatrically in couples at the open double doors. Through

the broad windows the June morning sun streamed gaily and recklessly in.

Klaus Heinrich looked round him as he processed between his parents

through the dreary arabesques, the dilapidated decorations of the

show-rooms, now not favoured by kindly artificial light. The bright

daylight cheerfully and soberly showed up their decay. From the big

lustres with their stiff-bound stems, stripped of their coverings in

honour of the day, rose thick forests of flameless candles, but

everywhere there were prisms missing, crystal festoons torn, so that

they gave a canker-bit and toothless impression. The silk damask

upholstery of the State furniture, which was arranged stiffly and

monotonously round the walls, was thread-bare, the gilt of the frames

chipped off, big blind patches marred the surfaces of the tall

candle-decked mirrors, and daylight shone through the moth-holes in the

faded and discoloured curtains. The gold and silver borders of the

tapestry hangings had torn away in several places, and were hanging

disconsolately from the walls. Even in the Silver Hall of the Gala

Rooms, where the Grand Duke was wont to receive solemn deputations, and

in the centre of which stood a mother-of-pearl table with stumpy silver

feet, a piece of the silver work had fallen from the ceiling leaving a

gaping patch of white plaster.

But why was it that it somehow seemed as if these rooms defied the

sober, mocking daylight, and proudly answered its challenge? Klaus

Heinrich looked sideways at his father.... The condition of the rooms

did not seem to worry him. Never of more than medium height, the Grand

Duke had become almost small in the course of years, but he strode

majestically on with head thrown back, the lemon-coloured ribbon of the

Order over his general's uniform, which he had donned to-day, though he

had no military leanings. From under his high and bald forehead and grey

eyebrows, his blue eyes, with dull rings round them, were fixed with

weary dignity on the distance, and from his pointed white moustaches the

two deep furrows ran down his yellowish skin to his beard, imparting to

his face a look of contempt. No, the bright daylight could not do any

harm to the rooms; the dilapidations did not in the least impair their

dignity, they rather increased it. They stood in their discomfort, their

theatrical symmetry, their strange musty play-house or church

atmosphere, cold and indifferent to the merry and sun-bathed world

outside--stern background of a pompous cult, at which Klaus Heinrich

this day for the first time officiated.

The procession passed through the pairs of lackeys, who, with an

expression of relentlessness, pressed their lips together and closed

their eyes, into the white and gold expanse of the Throne-room. A wave

of acts of homage, scrapings, bows, curtseys and salutes, swept through

the hall as the procession passed in front of the assembled guests.

There were diplomats with their wives, nobility of the Court and the

country, the corps of officers of the capital, the Ministers, amongst

whom could be descried the affected, confident face of the new Finance

Minister, Dr. Krippenreuther, the Knights of the Great Order of the

Grimmburg Griffin, the Presidents of the Diet, dignitaries of all kinds.

High up in the little box above the big looking-glass by the entrance

door could be descried the press representatives peering over each

other's shoulders and busily writing in their notebooks.... In front of

the throne-baldachin, itself a torn velvet arrangement, crowned with

ostrich feathers and framed with gold fillets which would have been all

the better for a touch-up, the procession divided as in a polonaise, and

went through carefully prescribed evolutions.

The pages and chamberlains fell aside to right and left. Herr von Bühl,

his face turned to the throne and his staff uplifted, stepped backwards

and stood still in the middle of the hall. The Grand Ducal pair and

their children walked up the rounded, red-carpeted steps to the

capacious gilded chairs which stood at the top. The remaining members of

the House, with the foreign princes, ranged themselves on both sides of

the throne; behind them stood the suite, the maids of honour and the

grooms of the chambers, and the pages stood on the steps. At a gesture

from Johann Albrecht, Herr von Knobelsdorff, who had previously taken up

his stand over against the throne, advanced straight to the

velvet-covered table, which stood by the side of the steps, and began at

once to read from various documents the official formalities.

Klaus Heinrich was declared to be of age and fit and entitled to wear

the crown, should necessity require it--every eye was turned on him at

this place, and at his Royal Highness Albrecht, his elder brother, who

stood close to him. The Heir Apparent was wearing the uniform of a

captain in the Hussar regiment which was called by his name. From his

silver-laced collar stretched an unmilitary width of civil stand-up

collar, and on it rested his fine, shrewd, and delicate head, with its

long skull and narrow temples, the straw-coloured moustache on the upper

lip, and the blue, lonely-looking eyes which had seen death. He looked

not in the least like a cavalry officer, yet so slender and

unapproachably aristocratic that Klaus Heinrich, with his national

cheek-bones, looked almost coarse beside him. The Heir Apparent pursed

up his lips when everybody looked at him, protruded his short rounded

underlip, and sucked it lightly against the upper one.

Several of the country's orders were bestowed on the Prince who had just

come of age, including the Albrecht Cross and the Great Order of the

Grimmburg Griffin, not to mention that he was confirmed in the House

Order whose insignia he had possessed since his tenth birthday.

Afterwards came the congratulations in the form of a processional Court,

led by the fawning Herr von Bühl, after which the gala-breakfast began

in the Marble Hall and in the hall of the Twelve Months.

The foreign princes were entertained for the next few days. A

garden-party was given in Hollerbrunn, with fireworks and dancing for

the young people of the Court in the park. Festive excursions with pages

in attendance were made through the sunny country-side to Monbrillant,

Jägerpreis, and Haderstein Ruins, and the people, that inferior order of

creation with the searching eyes and the high cheek-bones, stood on the

kerb and cheered themselves and their representatives. In the capital

Klaus Heinrich's photograph hung in the windows of the art-dealers, and

the _Courier_ actually published a printed likeness of him, a popular

and strangely idealized representation, showing the Prince in the

crimson mantle. But then came yet another great day--Klaus Heinrich's

formal entry into the Army, into the regiment of Grenadier Guards.

This is what happened. The regiment to which fell the honour of having

Klaus Heinrich as one of its officers was drawn up on the Albrechtsplatz

in open square. Many a plume waved in the middle. The princes of the

House and the generals were all present. The public, a black mass

against the gay background, crowded behind the barriers. Cameras were

levelled in several places at the scene of action. The Grand Duchess,

with the princesses and their ladies, watched the show from the windows

of the Old Schloss.

First of all, Klaus Heinrich, dressed as a lieutenant, reported himself

formally to the Grand Duke. He advanced sternly, without the shadow of a

smile, towards his father, clapped his heels together and humbly

acquainted him with his presence. The Grand Duke thanked him briefly,

also without a smile, and then in his turn, followed by his

aides-de-camp, advanced in his dress uniform and plumed hat into the

square. Klaus Heinrich stood before the lowered colours, an embroidered,

golden, and half-tattered piece of silk cloth, and took the oath. The

Grand Duke made a speech in detached sentences and the sharp voice of

command which he reserved for such occasions, in which he called his son

"Your Grand Ducal Highness" and publicly clasped the Prince's hand. The

Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, with crimson cheeks, led a cheer for

the Grand Duke in which the guests, the regiment, and the public joined.

A march past followed, and the whole ended with a military luncheon in

the castle.

This picturesque ceremony in the Albrechtsplatz was without practical

significance; its effect began and ended there. Klaus Heinrich never

dreamed of going into garrison, but went the very same day with his

parents and brother and sister to Hollerbrunn, to pass the summer there

in the cool old French rooms on the river, between the wall-like hedges

of the park, and then, in the autumn, to go up to the university. For so

it was ordained in the programme of his life; in the autumn he went up

to the university for a year, not that of the capital, but the second

one of the country, accompanied by Doctor Ueberbein, his tutor.

The appointment of this young savant as mentor was once more

attributable to an express, ardent wish of the Prince, and indeed, as

far as the choice of tutor and older companions was concerned, whom

Klaus Heinrich was to have at his side during this year of student

freedom, it was considered necessary to give a reasonable amount of

consideration to his expressed wishes. Yet there was much to be said

against this choice; it was unpopular, or at least criticized aloud or

in whispers in many quarters.

Raoul Ueberbein was not loved in the capital. Due respect was paid to

his medal for life-saving and to all his feverish energy, but the man

was no genial fellow-citizen, no jolly comrade, no blameless official.

The most charitable saw in him an oddity with a determined and

uncomfortably reckless disposition, who recognized no Sunday, no

holiday, no relaxation, and did not understand being a man amongst men

after work was done. This natural son of an adventuress had worked his

way up from the depths of society, from an obscure and prospectless

youth without means, by dint of sheer strength of will, to being, first

school teacher, then academic professor, then university lecturer, had

lived to see his appointment--had "engineered" it, as many said--to the

"Pheasantry" as teacher of a Grand Ducal Prince, and yet he knew no

rest, no contentment, no comfortable enjoyment of life.... But life, as

every decent man, thinking of Doctor Ueberbein, truly observed, life

does not consist only of profession and performance, it has its purely

human claims and duties, the neglect of which is a greater sin than the

display of some measure of joviality towards oneself and one's fellows

in the sphere of one's work, and only that personality can be considered

a harmonious one which succeeds in giving its due to each part,

profession and human feelings, life and performance.

Ueberbein's lack of any sense of camaraderie was bound to tell against

him. He avoided all social intercourse with his colleagues, and his

circle of friends was confined to the person of one man of another

scientific sphere, a surgeon and children's specialist with the

unsympathetic name of Sammet, a very popular surgeon to boot, who shared

certain characteristics with Ueberbein. But it was only very rarely--and

then only as a sort of favour--that he turned up at the club where the

teachers gathered after the day's work and worry, for a glass of beer, a

rubber, or a free exchange of views on public and personal

questions--but he passed his evenings, and, as his landlady reported,

also a great part of the night, working at science in his study, while

his complexion grew greener and greener, and his eyes showed more and

more clearly signs of overstrain.

The authorities had been moved, shortly after his return from the

"Pheasantry," to promote him to head master. Where was he going to stop?

At Director? High-school Professor? Minister for Education? Everybody

agreed that his immoderate and restless energy concealed imprudence and

defiance of public opinion--or rather did not conceal them. His

demeanour, his loud, blustering mode of speaking annoyed, irritated, and

exasperated people. His tone towards members of the teaching profession

who were older and in higher positions than himself was not what it

should be. He treated everybody, from the Director down to the humblest

usher, in a fatherly way, and his habit of talking of himself as of a

man who had "knocked about," of gassing about "Fate and Duty," and

thereby displaying his benevolent contempt for all those who "weren't

obliged to" and "smoked cigars in the morning," showed conceit pure and

simple. His pupils adored him; he achieved remarkable results with them,

that was agreed. But on the whole the Doctor had many enemies in the

town, more than he ever guessed, and the misgiving that his influence on

the Prince might be an undesirable one was put into words in at least

one portion of the daily press....

Anyhow Ueberbein obtained leave from the Latin school, and went first of

all alone, in the capacity of billeter, on a visit to the famous student

town, within whose walls Klaus Heinrich was destined to pass the year of

his apprenticeship, and on his return he was received in audience by

Excellency von Knobelsdorff, the Minister of the Grand Ducal House, to

receive the usual instructions. Their tenour was that almost the most

important object of this year was to establish traditions of comradeship

on the common ground of academic freedom between the Prince and the

student corps, especially in the interests of the dynasty--the

regulation phrases, which Herr von Knobelsdorff rattled off almost

casually, and which Doctor Ueberbein listened to with a silent bow,

while he drew his mouth, and with it his red beard, a little to one

side. Then followed Klaus Heinrich's departure with his mentor, a

dogcart and a servant or two, for the university.

A glorious year, full of the charm of artistic freedom, in the public

eye and in the mirror of public report--yet without technical importance

of any kind. Misgivings which had been felt in some quarters that Doctor

Ueberbein, through mistaking and misunderstanding the position, might

worry the Prince with excessive demands in the direction of objective

science, proved unfounded. On the contrary, it was obvious that the

doctor quite realized the difference between his own earnest, and his

pupil's exalted, sphere of existence. On the other hand (whether it was

the mentor's or the Prince's own fault does not matter) the freedom and

the unconstrained camaraderie, like the instruction, were interpreted in

a very relative and symbolical sense so that neither the one nor the

other, neither the knowledge nor the freedom, could be said to be the

essence and peculiarity of the year. Its essence and peculiarity were

rather, as it appeared, the year in itself, as the embodiment of custom

and impressive ceremoniousness, to which Klaus Heinrich deferred, just

as he had deferred to the theatrical rites on his last birthday--only

now not with a purple cloak, but occasionally wearing a coloured

student's cap, the so-called "Stürmer," in which he was portrayed in a

photograph issued at once by the _Courier_ to its readers.

As to his studies, his matriculation was not marked by any particular

festivities, though some reference was made to the honour which Klaus

Heinrich's admission bestowed on the university, and the lectures he

attended began with the address: "Grand Ducal Highness!" He drove in his

dogcart with a groom from the pretty green-clad villa, which the Marshal

of his father's household had leased for him in a select and not too

expensive square, amid the remarks and greetings of the passers-by, to

the lectures, and there he sat with the consciousness that the whole

thing was unessential and unnecessary for his exalted calling, yet with

a show of courteous attention.

Charming anecdotes of the signs the Prince gave of interest in the

lectures went about and had their due effect. Towards the end of one

course on Nature Study (for Klaus Heinrich attended these courses also

"for general information") the Professor, by way of illustration, had

filled a metal shell with water and announced that the water, when

frozen, would burst the shell by expansion; he promised to show the

class the pieces next lecture. Now he had not kept his word on this

point at the next lecture, probably out of forgetfulness: the broken

shell had not been forthcoming--Klaus Heinrich had therefore inquired as

to the result of the experiment. He had joined in asking questions of

the professor at the end of the lecture, just like any ordinary student,

and had modestly asked him: "Has the bomb burst?"--whereupon the

Professor, full of embarrassment at first, had then expressed his thanks

with glad surprise, and indeed emotion, for the kind interest the Prince

had expressed in his lectures.

Klaus Heinrich was honorary member of a student's club--only honorary,

because he was not allowed to fight duels--and once or twice attended

their wines, his Stürmer on his head. But since his guardians were well

aware that the results the influence of strong drink had on his highly

strung and delicate temperament were absolutely irreconcilable with his

exalted calling, he did not dare to drink seriously, and his comrades

were obliged on this point too to bear his Highness in mind. Their rude

customs were judiciously limited to a casual one or two, the general

tone was as exemplary as it used to be in the upper form at school, the

songs they sang were old ones of real poetry, and the meetings were, as

a whole, gala and parade nights, refined editions of the ordinary ones.

The use of Christian names was the bond of union between Klaus Heinrich

and his corps brothers, as the expression and basis of spontaneous

comradeship. But it was generally observed that this use sounded false

and artificial, however great the efforts to make it otherwise, and that

the students were always falling back unintentionally into the form of

address which took due notice of the Prince's Highness.

Such was the effect of his presence, of his friendly, alert, and always

uncompromising attitude which sometimes produced strange, even comical

phenomena in the demeanour of the persons with whom the Prince came into

contact. One evening, at a soirée which one of his professors gave, he

engaged a guest in conversation--a fat man of some age, a King's Counsel

by his title, who, despite his social importance, enjoyed the reputation

of a great roué and a regular old sinner. The conversation, whose

subject is a matter of no consequence and indeed would be difficult to

specify, lasted for a considerable time because no opportunity of

breaking it off presented itself. And suddenly, in the middle of his

talk with the Prince, the barrister whistled--whistled with his thick

lips one of those pointless sequences of notes which one utters when one

is embarrassed and wants to appear at one's ease, and then tried to

cover his comic breach of manners by clearing his throat and coughing.

Klaus Heinrich was accustomed to experiences of that kind, and tactfully

passed on.

If at any time he wanted to make a purchase himself and went into a

shop, his entrance caused a kind of panic. He would ask for what he

wanted, a button perhaps, but the girl would not understand him, would

look dazed, and unable to fix her attention on the button, but obviously

absorbed by something else--something outside and above her duties as a

shop-assistant--she would drop a few things, turn the boxes upside down

in obvious helplessness, and it was all Klaus Heinrich could do to

restore her composure by his friendly manner.

Such, as I have said, was the effect of his attitude, and in the city it

was often described as arrogance and blameworthy contempt for

fellow-creatures--others roundly denied the arrogance, and Doctor

Ueberbein, when the subject was broached to him at a social gathering,

would put the question, whether "every inducement to contempt for his

fellow-creatures being readily conceded," any such contempt really was

possible in a case like the present of complete detachment from all the

activities of ordinary men. Indeed, any remark of that kind he met in

his unanswerable blustering way by the assertion that the Prince not

only did not despise his fellow-creatures, but respected even the most

worthless of them, only considered them all the more sound, serious, and

good for the way in which the poor over-taxed and over-strained man in

the street earned his living by the sweat of his brow....

The society of the university town had no time to reach a definite

verdict on the question. The year of student life was over before one

could turn round, and Klaus Heinrich returned, as prescribed by the

programme of his life, to his father's palace, there, despite his left

arm, to pass a full year in serious military service. He was attached to

the Dragoons of the Guard for six months, and directed the taking up of

intervals of eight paces for lance-exercises as well as the forming of

squares, as if he were a serious soldier; then changed his weapon and

transferred to the Grenadier Guards, so as to get an insight into

infantry work also. It fell to him to march to the Schloss and change

the Guard--an evolution which attracted large crowds. He came swiftly

out of the Guard-room, his star on his breast, placed himself with drawn

sword on the flank of the company and gave not quite correct orders,

which, however, did not matter, as his stout soldiers executed the right

movements all the same.

On guest-nights, too, at head-quarters, he sat on the colonel's right

hand, and by his presence prevented the officers from unhooking their

uniform collars and playing cards after dinner. After this, being now

twenty years old, he started on an "educational tour"--no longer in the

company of Doctor Ueberbein, but in that of a military attendant and

courier, Captain von Braunbart-Schellendorf of the Guards, a fair-haired

officer who was destined to be Klaus Heinrich's aide-de-camp, and to

whom the tour gave an opportunity of establishing himself on a footing

of intimacy and influence with him.

Klaus Heinrich did not see much in his educational tour, which took him

far afield, and was keenly followed by the _Courier_. He visited the

courts, introduced himself to the sovereigns, attended gala dinners with

Captain von Braunbart, and on his departure received one of the

country's superior Orders. He took a look at such sights as Captain von

Braunbart (who also received several Orders) chose for him, and the

_Courier_ reported from time to time that the Prince had expressed his

admiration of a picture, a museum, or a building to the director or

curator who happened to be his cicerone. He travelled apart, protected

and supported by the chivalrous precautions of Captain von Braunbart,

who kept the purse, and to whose devoted zeal was due the fact that not

one of Klaus Heinrich's trunks was missing at the end of the journey.

A couple of words, no more, may be devoted to an interlude, which had

for scene a big city in a neighbouring kingdom, and was brought about by

Captain von Braunbart with all due circumspection. The Captain had a

friend in this city, a bachelor nobleman and a cavalry captain, who was

on terms of intimacy with a young lady member of the theatrical world,

an accommodating and at the same time trustworthy young person. In

pursuance of an agreement by letter between Captain von Braunbart and

his friend, Klaus Heinrich was thrown in contact with the damsel at her

home--suitably arranged for the purpose--and the acquaintance allowed to

develop _à deux_. Thus an expressly foreseen item in the educational

tour was conscientiously realized, without Klaus Heinrich being involved

in more than a casual acquaintance. The damsel received a memento for

her services, and Captain von Braunbart's friend a decoration. So the

incident closed.

Klaus Heinrich also visited the fair Southern lands, incognito, under a

romantic-sounding title. There he would sit, alone, perhaps for a

quarter of an hour, dressed in a suit of irreproachable cut, among other

foreigners on a white restaurant terrace looking over a dark-blue sea,

and it might happen that somebody at another table would notice him, and

try, in the manner of tourists, to engage him in conversation. What

could he be, that quiet and self-possessed-looking young man? People ran

over the various spheres of life, tried to fit him into the merchant,

the military, the student class. But they never felt that they had got

it quite right--they felt his Highness, but nobody guessed it.

V

ALBRECHT II

Grand Duke Johann Albrecht died of a terrible illness, which had

something naked and abstract about it, and to which no other name but

just that of death could be given. It seemed as if death, sure of its

prey, in this case disdained any mask or gloss, and came on the scene as

its very self, as dissolution by and for itself. What actually happened

was a decomposition of the blood, caused by internal hæmorrhages; and an

exploratory operation, which was conducted by the Director of the

University Hospital, a famous surgeon, could not arrest the corroding

progress of the gangrene. The end soon came, all the sooner that Johann

Albrecht made little resistance to the approach of death. He showed

signs of an unutterable weariness, and often remarked to his attendants,

as well as to the surgeons attending him, that he was "dead sick of the

whole thing"--meaning, of course, his princely existence, his exalted

life in the glare of publicity. His cheek-furrows, those two lines of

arrogance and boredom, resolved in his last days into an exaggerated,

grotesque grimace, and continued thus until death smoothed them out.

The Grand Duke's illness fell in the winter. Albrecht, the Heir

Apparent, called away from his warm dry resort, arrived in snowy wet

weather, which was as bad for his health as it could be. His brother,

Klaus Heinrich, interrupted his educational tour, which was anyhow

nearing its close, and returned with Captain von Braunbart-Schellendorf

in all haste from the fair land of the South to the capital. Besides the

two prince-sons, the Grand Duchess Dorothea, the Princesses Catherine

and Ditlinde, Prince Lambert without his lovely wife--the surgeons in

attendance and Prahl the valet-de-chambre waited at the bedside, while

the Court officials and Ministers on duty were collected in the

adjoining room. If credence might be given to the assertions of the

servants, the ghostly noise in the "Owl Chamber" had been exceptionally

loud in the last weeks and days. According to them it was a rattling and

a shaking noise, which recurred periodically, and whose meaning could

not be distinguished outside the room.

Johann Albrecht's last act of Highness consisted in giving with his own

hand to the professor, who had performed the useless operation with the

greatest skill, his patent of nomination to the Privy Council. He was

terribly exhausted, "sick of the whole thing," and his consciousness

even in his more lucid moments was not at all clear; but he carried out

the act with scrupulous care and made a ceremony of it. He had himself

propped up, made a few alterations, shading his eyes with his

wax-coloured hands, in the chance disposition of those present, ordered

his sons to place themselves on both sides of his canopied bed--and

while his soul was already tugging at her moorings, and floating here

and there on unknown currents, he composed his features with mechanical

skill into his smile of graciousness for the handing of the diploma to

the Professor, who had left the room for a short time.

Quite towards the end, when the dissolution had already attacked the

brain, the Grand Duke made one wish clear, which, though scarcely

understood, was hastily complied with, although its fulfilment could not

do the slightest good to the Grand Duke. Certain words, apparently

disconnected, kept recurring in the murmurings of the sick man. He named

several stuffs, silk, satin, and brocade, mentioned Prince Klaus

Heinrich, used a technical expression in medicine, and said something

about an Order, the Albrecht Cross of the Third Class with Crown.

Between whiles one caught quite ordinary remarks, which apparently

referred to the dying man's princely calling, and sounded like

"extraordinary obligation" and "comfortable majority"; then the

descriptions of the stuffs began again, to which was appended in a

louder voice the word "Sammet."(1) At last it was realized that the

Grand Duke wanted Doctor Sammet to be called in, the doctor who had

happened to be present at the Grimmburg at the time of Klaus Heinrich's

birth, twenty years before, and had, for a long time now, been

practising in the capital.

(1) _I.e._, velvet.

The doctor was really a children's doctor, but he was summoned and came:

already nearly grey on the temples, with a drooping moustache,

surmounted by a nose which was rather too flat at the bottom,

clean-shaven otherwise and with cheeks rather sore from shaving. With

head on one side, his hand on his watch-chain, and elbows close to his

sides, he examined the situation, and began at once to busy himself in a

practical, gentle way about his exalted patient, whereat the latter

expressed his satisfaction in no uncertain fashion. Thus it was that it

fell to Doctor Sammet to administer the last injections to the Grand

Duke, with his supporting hand to ease the final spasms, and to be, more

than any of the other doctors, his helper in death--a distinction which

indeed provoked some secret irritation amongst the others, but on the

other hand resulted in the doctor's appointment shortly afterwards to

the vacancy in the important post of Director and Chief Physician of the

"Dorothea," a Children's Hospital, in which capacity he was destined

later to play some part in certain developments.

So died Johann Albrecht the Third, uttering his last sigh on a winter's

night. The old castle was brightly illuminated while he was passing

away. The stern furrows of boredom were smoothed out in his face, and,

relieved of any exertion on his own part, he was subjected to

formalities which surrounded him for the last time, carried him along,

and made his wax-like shell just once more the focus and object of

theatrical rites.... Herr von Bühl zu Bühl showed his usual energy in

organizing the funeral, which was attended by many princely guests. The

gloomy ceremonies, the different exposures and identifications,

corpse-parades, blessings, and memorial services at the catafalque took

days to complete, and Johann Albrecht's corpse was for eight hours

exposed to public view, surrounded by a guard of honour consisting of

two colonels, two first lieutenants, two cavalry sergeants, two infantry

sergeants, two corporals, and two chamberlains.

Then at last came the moment when the zinc shell was brought by eight

lackeys from the altar recess of the Court Church, where it had been on

show between crape-covered candelabra and six-foot candles, to the

entry-hall, placed by eight foresters in the mahogany coffin, carried by

eight Grenadier Guardsmen to the six-horsed and black-draped hearse,

which set off for the mausoleum amidst cannon salvos and the tolling of

bells. The flags hung heavy with rain from the middle of their poles.

Although it was early morning, the gas-lamps were burning in the streets

along which the funeral was to pass. Johann Albrecht's bust was

displayed amongst mourning decorations in the shop-windows, and

postcards with the portrait of the deceased ruler, which were everywhere

for sale, were in great demand. Behind the rows of troops, the gymnastic

clubs, and veteran associations which kept the road, stood the people on

tiptoe in the snow-brash and gazed with bowed heads at the slowly

passing coffin, preceded by the wreath-bearing lackeys, the Court

officials, the bearers of the insignia and Dom Wislezenus, the Court

preacher, and covered with a silver-worked pall, whose corners were held

by Lord Marshal von Bühl, Master of the Royal Hunt von Stieglitz,

Adjutant-General Count Schmettern, and Minister of the Household von

Knobelsdorff.

By the side of his brother Klaus Heinrich, immediately behind the

charger which was led in rear of the hearse, and at the head of the

other mourners, walked Grand Duke Albrecht II. His clothes, the tall

stiff plume in the front of his busby, the long boots under his gaudy,

ample Hussar's pelisse, with the crape band, did not become him. He

walked as if embarrassed by the eyes of the crowd, and his

shoulder-blades, naturally rather crooked, were twisted in an awkward

nervous way as he walked. Repugnance at having to be chief actor in this

funeral pomp was clearly written on his pale face. He did not raise his

eyes as he walked, and he sucked his short rounded lower lip against the

upper....

His demeanour remained the same during the Curialia accompanying his

accession, which were so arranged as to spare him as much as possible.

The Grand Duke signed the oath in the Silver Hall of the Gala Rooms

before the assembled Ministers, and read aloud in the Throne-room,

standing in front of the rounded chair under the baldachin, the Speech

from the Throne, which Herr von Knobelsdorff had drawn up. The economic

condition of the country was touched upon in it with earnestness and

delicacy, while appreciative mention was made of the unanimity which

despite all troubles existed between the princes and the country--at

which place a prominent functionary, who was apparently discontented

about promotion, was said to have whispered to his neighbour that the

unanimity consisted in the Prince being as deeply in debt as the

country--a caustic remark which was much repeated, and ended by getting

into hostile newspapers.... To end up, the President of the Landtag

called for a cheer for the Grand Duke, a service was held in the Court

Chapel, and that was all.

Further, Albrecht signed an edict, by virtue of which a number of

sentences of fines and imprisonment, which had been imposed for the less

serious misdemeanours, chiefly infringement of the forest laws, were

remitted. The solemn procession through the city and the acclamation in

the Town Hall were omitted altogether, as the Grand Duke felt too tired

for them. Having been a captain hitherto, he was promoted on the

occasion of his accession at once to the colonelcy _à la suite_ of his

Hussar regiment, but scarcely ever put the uniform on, and kept as far

away as possible from his sphere as a soldier. He made no change

whatever in his staff, perhaps out of respect to his father's memory,

either among the Court appointments or in the Ministry.

The public saw him but rarely. His proud and bashful disinclination to

show himself, to put himself forward, to allow others to acclaim him,

was so clearly shown from the very beginning as to shock public opinion.

He never appeared in the large box at the Court Theatre. He never took

part in the park parade. When in residence at the Old Schloss, he had

himself driven in a closed carriage to a remote and empty part of the

suburbs, where he got out to take a little exercise; and in the summer

at Hollerbrunn he only left the hedged walks of the parks on exceptional

occasions.

Did the people catch a glimpse of him--at the Albrechtstor it might be,

when wrapped in his heavy fur coat, which his father had worn before

him, and on whose thick collar his delicate head now rested, he stepped

into his carriage--timid glances were levelled at him, and the cheering

was faint and hesitating. For the lower classes felt that with a prince

like this there could be no question of cheering him and thereby

cheering themselves at the same time. They looked at him, and did not

recognize themselves in him; his refined superiority made it clear that

they were of different clay from his. And they were not accustomed to

that. Was there not a commissionaire posted in the Albrechtsplatz that

very day, who with his high cheek-bones and grey whiskers looked a

coarse and homely replica of the late Grand Duke? And did one not

similarly meet with Prince Klaus Heinrich's features in the lower

classes?

It was not so with his brother. The people could not see in him an

idealized version of themselves, whom it could make them happy to

cheer--as it meant cheering themselves too! the Grand Duke's

Highness--his undoubted Highness!--was a nobility of the usual kind,

undomestic, and without the stamp of the graciousness which inspires

confidence. He too knew that; and the consciousness of his Highness,

together with that of his want of popular graciousness, were quite

enough to account for his shyness and haughtiness. He began already to

delegate as far as possible his duties to Prince Klaus Heinrich. He sent

him to open the new spring at Immenstadt and to the historical

town-pageant at Butterburg. Indeed, his contempt for any exhibition of

his princely person went so far that Herr von Knobelsdorff had the

greatest difficulty in persuading him to receive the Presidents of the

two Chambers in the Throne-room himself, and not, "for reasons of

health," as he was minded, to give place to his brother on this solemn

occasion.

Albrecht II lived a lonely life in the Old Schloss; that was unavoidable

in the nature of things. In the first place, Prince Klaus Heinrich,

since Johann Albrecht's death, kept a Court of his own. That was

demanded by etiquette, and he had been given the "Hermitage" as a

residence, that Empire Schloss on the fringe of the northern suburbs,

which, reposeful and charming, but long uninhabited and neglected, in

the middle of its overgrown park next the Town Gardens, looked down on

its little mud-thick pond. Some time ago, when Albrecht came of age, the

"Hermitage" had been freshened up and for form's sake destined to be the

Heir Apparent's palace; but as Albrecht had always come in summer

straight from his warm, dry foreign resort to Hollerbrunn, he had never

used his palace....

Klaus Heinrich lived there without unnecessary expense, with one

major-domo, who superintended the household, a Baron von

Schulenburg-Tressen, nephew of the Mistress of the Robes. Besides his

valet, Neumann, he had two other lackeys for his daily needs; he

borrowed the game-keeper when necessary for ceremonial shoots, from the

Grand Duke's Court. One coachman and a couple of grooms in red

waistcoats looked after the carriages and horses, which consisted of one

pony-cart, one brougham, one dog-cart, two riding and two carriage

horses. One gardener, helped by two boys, looked after the park and the

garden; and one cook with her kitchen-maid, as well as two chambermaids,

made up the female staff of the "Hermitage."

It was Court Marshal von Schulenburg's business to keep his young

master's establishment going on the apanage which the Landtag, after

Albrecht's accession, had voted the Grand Duke's brother after a serious

debate. It amounted to two thousand five hundred pounds. For the sum of

four thousand pounds, which had been the original demand, had never had

any prospect of recommending itself to the Landtag, and so a wise and

magnanimous act of self-denial had been credited to Klaus Heinrich,

which had made an excellent impression in the country. Every winter Herr

von Schulenburg sold the ice from the pond. He had the hay in the park

mowed twice every summer and sold. After the harvests the surface of the

fields looked almost like English turf.