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
