beforehand during the conversation, and allowed himself to be conducted over the carpet and plank steps to his seat on the edge of the middle platform.
There, in his chain and stars, one foot advanced, his white-gloved hands crossed on his sword hilt, his helmet on the ground beside him, visible to the holiday crowd on every side, he sat and listened with calm demeanour to the Lord Mayor's speech. Thereupon, when they came to the request, he rose, walked, without noticeable pre-caution and without looking at his feet, down the steps to where the foundation stone lay, and with a little hammer gave three slow taps to the block of sandstone, at the same time repeating in the deep hush, with his rather sharp voice, a sentence which Herr von Knobelsdorff had previously impressed upon him. School children sang in shrill chorus, and Klaus Heinrich drove away.
On the anniversary of the War of Independence he marched in front of the veterans. A grey-haired officer shouted in a voice which seemed hoarse with the smoke of gunpowder: "Halt! off hats! Eyes right!" And they stood, with medals and crosses on their coats, the rough beavers in their hands, and looked up at him with blood-shot eyes like those of a hound as he walked by with a friendly look, and paused by one er two to ask where they had served, where they had been under fire.… He attended the gymnastic display, graced .the sports with his presence, and had the victors presented to him for a short conversation. The lithe athletic youths stood awkwardly before him, just after they had done the most astonishing feats, and Klaus Heinrich quickly strung together a few technical remarks, which he remembered from Herr Zotte, and which he uttered with great fluency, the while he hid his left hand.
He attended the Five Houses' Fishing festival, he was present in his red-covered seat of honour at the Grimmburg
