Royal Highness/Chapter 3
The Grand Duke's second son made his first public appearance on the occasion of his christening. This festivity aroused the same interest in the country as always attached to happenings within the Royal Family circle. It took place after weeks of discussion and research as to the manner of its arrangement, was held in the Court Church by the President of the High Consistory, Dom Wislezenus, with all the due ceremonial, and in public, to the extent that the Lord Marshal's office, by the Prince's orders, had issued invitations to it to every class of society.
Herr von Bühl zu Bühl, a courtly ritualist of the greatest circumspection and accuracy, in his full-dress uniform superintended, with the help of two masters of the ceremonies, the whole of the intricate proceedings: the gathering of the princely guests in the Gala Rooms, the solemn procession in which they, attended by pages and squires, walked up the staircase of Heinrich the Luxurious and through a covered passage into the church, the entry of the spectators from the highest to the lowest, the distribution of the seats, the observance of due decorum during the religious service itself, the order of precedence at the congratulations which took place directly after the service was ended. … He panted and purled, smiled ingratiatingly, brandished his staff, laughed in nervous bursts, and kept executing retreating bows.
The Court Church was decorated with plants and draperies. In addition to the representatives of the nobility, of the Court and country, and of the higher and lower Civil Service, tradesmen, country folk, and common artisans, in high good humour, filled the seats. But in a half-circle of red-velvet arm-chairs in front of the altar sat the relations of the infant, foreign princes as sponsors and the trusty representatives of such as had not come in person. The assemblage at the christening of the Heir Apparent six years before had not been more distinguished. For in view of Albrecht's delicacy, the advanced age of the Grand Duke, and the dearth of Grimmburg relations, the person of the second-born prince was at once recognized as an important guarantee for the future of the dynasty. Little Albrecht took no part in the ceremony; he was kept to his bed with an indisposition which Surgeon-General Eschrich declared to be of a nervous character.
Dom Wislezenus preached from a text of the Grand Duke's own choosing. The Courier, a gossiping city newspaper, had given a full account of how the Grand Duke had one day fetched with his very own hands the large metal-clasped family Bible out of the rarely visited library, had shut himself up with it in his study, searched in it for a whole hour, at last copied the text he had chosen on to a piece of paper with his pocket-pencil, signed it "Johann Albrecht," and sent it to the Court preacher. Dom Wislezenus treated it in a musical style, so to speak, like a leit motif. He turned it inside and out, dressed it in different shapes and squeezed it dry; he announced it in a whisper, then with the whole power of his lungs; and whereas, delivered lightly and reflectively at the beginning of his discourse, it seemed a thin, almost unsubstantial subject; at the close, when he for the last time thundered it at the congregation, it appeared richly orchestrated, heavily scored, and pregnant with emotion. Then he passed on to the actual baptism, and carried it out at full length so that all could see it, with due stress on every detail.
This, then, was the day of the prince's first public appearance, and that he was the chief actor in the drama was clearly shown by the fact that he was the last to come on the stage, and that his entry was distinct from that of the rest of the company. Preceded by Herr von Bühl, he entered slowly, in the arms of the Mistress of the Robes, Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen, and all eyes were fixed on him. He was asleep in his laces, his veils, and his white silk robe. One of his little hands happened to be hidden. His appearance evoked unusual delight and emotion. The cynosure and centre of attraction, he lay quietly there, bearing it all, as may be supposed, patiently and unassumingly. It was to his credit that he did not make any disturbance, did not clutch or struggle; but, doubtless from innate trustfulness, quietly resigned himself to the state which surrounded him, bore it patiently, and even at that early date sank his own emotions in it. …
The arms in which he reposed were frequently changed at fixed points in the ceremony. Baroness Schulenburg handed him with a curtsey to his aunt, Catherine, who, with a stern look on her face, was dressed in a newly remade lilac silk dress, and wore Crown jewels in her hair. She laid him, when the moment came, solemnly in his mother Dorothea's arms, who, in all her stately beauty, with a smile on her proud and lovely mouth, held him out a while to be blessed, and then passed him on. A cousin held him for a minute or two, a child of eleven or twelve years with fair hair, thin sticks of legs, cold bare arms, and a broad red silk sash which stuck out in a huge knot behind her white dress. Her peaked face was anxiously fixed on the Master of the Ceremonies. …
Once the Prince woke up, but the flickering flames of the altar-candles and a many-coloured shaft of sunlit dust blinded him, and made him close his eyes again. And as there were no thoughts, but only soft unsubstantial dreams in his head, as moreover he was feeling no pain at the moment, he at once fell asleep again.
He received a number of names while he slept; but the chief names were Klaus Heinrich.
And he slept on in his cot with its gilded cornice and blue silk curtains, while the royal family feasted in the Marble Hall, and the rest of the guests in the Hall of the Knights, in his honour.
The newspapers reported his first appearance: they described his looks and his dress, and emphasized his truly princely behaviour, couching the moving and inspiring account in words which had often done duty on similar occasions. After that, the public for a long time heard little of him, and he nothing of them.
He knew nothing as yet, understood nothing as yet, guessed nothing of the difficulty, danger, and sternness of the life prescribed for him; nothing in his conduct suggested that he felt any contrast between himself and the great public. His little existence was an irresponsible, carefully supervised dream, played on a stage remote from the public gaze; and this stage was peopled with countless tinted phantoms, both stationary and active, some emerging but transiently, some permanently at hand.
Of the permanent ones, the parents were far in the background, and not altogether distinguishable. They were his parents, that was certain, and they were exalted, and friendly too. When they approached there was a feeling as if everything else slipped away to each side, and left a respectable passage along which they advanced towards him to show him a moment's tenderness. The nearest and clearest things to him were two women with white caps and aprons, two beings who were obviously all goodness, purity, and loving-kindness, who tended his little body in every way, and were much distressed when he cried.… A close partner in his life, too, was Albrecht, his brother; but he was grave, distant, and much more advanced.
When Klaus Heinrich was two years old, another birth took place in the Grimmburg, and a princess came into the world. Thirty-six guns were allotted to her, because she was of the female sex, and she was given the name of Ditlinde at the font. She was Klaus Heinrich's sister, and it was a good thing for him that she appeared. She was at first surprisingly small and weak, but she soon grew like him, caught him up, and the two became insepar able. They shared each other's lives, each other's views, feelings, and ideas: they communicated to each other their impressions of the world outside them.
It was a world, they were impressions, calculated to produce a reflective frame of mind. In winter they lived in the old castle. In summer they lived in Hollerbrunn, the summer schloss, on the river, in the cool, in the scent of the violet hedges with white statues between them. On the way thither, or if at any other time father or mother took them with them in one of the brown carriages with the little golden crown on the door, all the passers-by stopped, cheered, and took their hats off; for father was Prince and Ruler of the country, consequently they them selves were Prince and Princess—undoubtedly in precisely the same sense as were the prince and princesses in the French stories which their Swiss governess told them. That was worth consideration, it was at any rate a peculiar occurrence. When other children heard the stories, they necessarily regarded the princes which figured in them from a great distance, and as solemn beings whose rank was a glorification of reality and with whom to concern themselves was undoubtedly a chastening of their thoughts, and an escape from the ordinary existence. But Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde regarded the heroes of the stories as their own equals and fellows, they breathed the same air as them, they lived in a schloss like them, they stood on a fraternal footing with them, and were justified in identifying themselves with them. Was it their lot, then, to live always and continually on the height to which others only climbed when stories were being told to them? The Swiss governess, true to her general principles, would have found it impossible to deny it, if the children had asked the question in so many words.
The Swiss governess was the widow of a Calvinistic minister and was in charge of both children, each of whom had two lady's maids as well. She was black and white throughout: her cap was white and her dress black, her face was white, with white warts on one cheek, and her smooth hair had a mixed black-and-white metallic sheen. She was very precise and easily put out. When things happened which, though quite without danger, could not be allowed, she clasped her white hands and turned her eyes up to heaven. But her quietest and severest mode of punishment for serious occasions was to "look sadly" at the children—implying that they had lost their self-respect. On a fixed day she began, on a hint from higher quarters, to address Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde as "Grand Ducal Highness," and from that day she was more easily put out than before.…
But Albrecht was called "Royal Highness." Aunt Catherine's children were members of the family only on the distaff side, and so were of less importance. But Albrecht was Crown Prince and Heir Apparent, so that it was not at all unfitting that he should look so pale and distant and keep so much to his bed. He wore Austrian coats with flap pockets and cut long behind. His head had a big bump at the back and narrow temples, and he had a long face. While still quite young he had come through a serious illness, which, in the opinion of Surgeon-General Eschrich, was the reason for his heart having "shifted over to the right." However that might be, he had seen Death face to face, a fact which had probably intensified the shy dignity which was natural to him. He seemed to be extremely stand-offish, cold from embarrass ment, and proud from lack of graciousness. He lisped a little and then blushed at doing so, because he was always criticizing himself. His shoulder-blades were a little uneven. One of his eyes had some weakness or other, so that he used glasses for writing his exercises, which helped to make him look old and wise.… Albrecht's tutor, Doctor Veit, a man with hanging mud-coloured moustaches, hollow cheeks, and wan eyes unnaturally far apart, was always at his left hand. Doctor Veit was always dressed in black, and carried a book dangling down his thigh, with his index-finger thrust between its leaves.
Klaus Heinrich felt that Albrecht did not care much for him, and he saw that it was not only because of his inferiority in years. He himself was tender-hearted and prone to tears, that was his nature. He cried, when any body "looked sadly" at him, and when he knocked his forehead against a corner of the nursery table, so that it bled, he howled from sympathy with his forehead. But Albrecht had faced Death, yet never cried on any condition. He stuck his short, rounded underlip a little forward, and sucked it lightly against the upper one—that was all. He was most superior. The Swiss governess referred in so many words to him in matters of comme il faut as a model. He had never allowed himself to converse with the gorgeous creatures who belonged to the court, not exactly men and human beings, but lackeys—as Klaus Heinrich had sometimes done in unguarded moments. For Albrecht was not curious. The look in his eyes was that of a lonely boy, who had no wish to let the world intrude upon him. Klaus Heinrich, on the. contrary, chatted with the lackeys from that same wish, and from an urgent though perhaps dangerous and improper desire to feel some contact with what lay outside the charmed circle. But the lackeys, young and old, at the doors, in the corridors and the passage-rooms, with their sand-coloured gaiters and brown coats, on the red-gold lace of which the same little crown as on the carriage doors was repeated again and again—they straightened their knees when Klaus Heinrich chatted to them, laid their great hands on the seams of their thick velvet breeches, bent a little forward towards him, so that the aiguillettes dangled from their shoulders, and returned various, highly proper answers, the most important part of which was the address "Grand Ducal Highness," and smiled as they did so with an expression of cautious sympathy, which recalled the words of the old song, "The lad that is born to be king." Sometimes when he got the chance, Klaus Heinrich went on voyages of discovery in uninhabited parts of the schloss, with Ditlinde, his sister, when she was old enough.
At that time he was having lessons from Schulrat Dröge, Rector of the city schools, who was chosen to be his first tutor. Schulrat Dröge was a born pedagogue. His index-finger, with its folds of dry skin and gold stoneless signet-ring, followed the line of print when Klaus Heinrich read, waiting before going on to the next word until the preceding one had been read. He came in a frock-coat and white waistcoat, with the ribbon of some inferior order in his button-hole, and in broad shiny boots with brown upper-leathers. He wore a pointed grey beard, and bushy grey hair grew out of his big, broad ears. His brown hair was brushed up into points on his temples, and so precisely parted as to show clearly his yellow dry scalp, which was full of holes like canvas. But thin grey hair was visible under the strong brown hair behind and at the sides. He bowed slightly to the lackeys who opened the door for him to the big schoolroom at whose table Klaus Heinrich sat waiting for him. But to Klaus Heinrich he did not confine himself to a superficial bow as he entered the room, but made a pronounced and deliberate bow before he came up to him, and waited for his exalted pupil to offer him his hand. This Klaus Heinrich did; and the fact that he did so twice, not only when he greeted him, but also when he took his departure, just in the graceful and winning way in which he had seen his father give his hand to those who expected it, seemed to him far more important and essential than all the instruction which came between the two ceremonies.
After Schulrat Dröge had come and gone any number of times, Klaus Heinrich had imperceptibly gained a knowledge of all sorts of practical things: to everybody's surprise he was quite at home in every kind of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and could reel off to order the names of the towns in the Grand Duchy pretty well without an omission. But, as has been said, this was not what was in his opinion really necessary and essential for him. From time to time, when he was inattentive at his lessons, the Schulrat rebuked him with a reference to his exalted calling. "Your exalted calling requires you …" he would say, or: "You owe it to your exalted calling …" What was his calling, and how was it exalted? Why did the lackeys smile as if to say, "The lad that is born to be king," and why was his governess so much put out when he let himself go a little in speech or action? He looked round him, and at times, when he looked steadily and long and forced himself to probe the essence of the phenomena around him, a dim apprehension arose in him of the "aloofness" of his position.
He was standing in one of the "gala rooms," the Silver Hall, in which, as he knew, his father the Grand Duke received solemn deputations—he happened to have wandered into it by himself and he took stock of his surroundings.
It was winter-time and cold, his little shoes were reflected in the glass-clear yellow squares of the parquet which spread like a sheet of ice before him. The ceiling, covered with silvered arabesque-work, was so high that a long metal shaft was necessary to allow the many-armed silver chandelier with its forest of tall white candles to swing in the middle of the great space. Below the ceiling came silver-framed coats-of-arms in faded colours. The walls were edged with silver, and hung with white silk with yellow spots, not to mention a split here and there. A sort of monumental baldachin, resting on two strong silver columns and decorated in front with a silver garland, broken in two places, from the top of which looked down a portrait of a deceased, powdered ancestress draped in imitation ermine, formed the chimney-piece. On each side of the fireplace were broad silvered arm-chairs up holstered in torn white silk. On the side walls opposite each other towered enormous silver-framed mirrors, whose glass was covered with blind spots, and on each side of whose broad white marble ledges stood two can delabra which carried big white candles like the sconces on the walls all round, and like the four silver candlesticks which stood in the corners. Before the high windows to the right, looking over the Albrechtsplatz, whose outer ledges were covered with snow, white silk curtains, yellow spotted, with silver cords and trimmed with lace, fell in rich, heavy folds to the floor. In the middle of the room, under the chandelier, a moderate-sized table, with a pedestal made like a knobbly silver tree-stump and a top made of eight triangles of opaque mother-of-pearl, stood useless, as there were no chairs round it, and it could only serve, and be meant to serve, at the very best, as a support for your Highness, when the lackeys opened the doors and ushered in the solemn figures in Court dress who came to present their respects to you.…
Klaus Heinrich looked round the hall, and clearly saw that there was nothing here which reminded him of the realities which Schulrat Dröge, for all his bows, was always impressing upon him. Here all was Sunday and solemnity, just as in church, where also he would have felt the calls made on him by his tutor out of place. Everything here was severe and empty show and a formal symmetry, self-sufficient, pointless, and uncomfortable—whose functions were obviously to create an atmosphere of awe and tension, not of freedom and ease, to inculcate an attitude of decorum and discreet self-obliteration towards an unnamed object. And it was cold in the silver hall—cold as in the halls of the snow-king, where the children's hearts froze stiff.
Klaus Heinrich walked over the glassy floor and stood at the table in the middle. He laid his right hand lightly on the mother-of-pearl table, and placed the left on his hip, so far behind that it rested almost in the small of his back, and was not visible from in front, for it was an ugly sight, brown and wrinkled, and had not kept pace with the right in its growth. He stood resting on one leg, with the other a little advanced, and kept his eyes fixed on the silver ornaments of the door. It was not the place nor the attitude for dreaming, and yet he dreamed.
He saw his father, and looked at him as he looked at the hall, to try to grasp his meaning. He saw the dull haughtiness of his blue eyes, the furrows which, proudly and morosely, ran from nostril down to his beard, and were often deepened or accentuated by weariness and boredom.… Nobody dared to address him or to go freely up to him and speak to him unasked—not even the children: it was forbidden, it was dangerous. He answered, it is true: but he answered distantly and coldly, a look of helplessness, of gene, passed over his face, which Klaus Heinrich was quite able to understand.
Papa made a speech and sent his petitioners away; that is what always happened. He gave an audience at the beginning of the Court ball, and at the end of the dinner with which the winter began. He went with mamma through the rooms and halls, in which the members of the Court were gathered, went through the Marble Hall and the Gala Rooms, through the Picture Gallery, the Hall of the Knights, the Hall of the Twelve Months, the Audience Chamber, and the Ball-room—went not only in a fixed direction, but along a fixed path which bustling Herr von Bühl kept free for him, and addressed a few words to the assembled throng. Whoever was addressed by him bowed low, left a space of parquet between himself and papa, and answered soberly and with signs of gratification. Thereupon papa greeted them over the intervening space, from the stronghold of precise regulations which prescribed the others' movements and warranted his own attitude, greeted them smilingly and lightly and passed on. Smilingly and lightly.… Of course, of course, Klaus Heinrich quite understood it, the look of helplessness which passed for one moment over papa's face when anybody was impetuous enough to address him unasked—understood it, and shared his feeling of gêne! It wounded something, some soft, virgin envelope of our existence which was so essential to it that we stood helpless when anybody roughly broke through it. And yet it was this same something which made our eyes so dull, and gave us those deep furrows of boredom.…
Klaus Heinrich stood and saw—he saw his mother and her beauty, which was famed and extolled far and wide. He saw her standing en robe de ceremonie, in front of her great candle-lighted glass, for sometimes, on solemn occasions, he was allowed to be present when the Court hairdresser and the bed-chamber women put the last touches to her toilette. Herr von Knobelsdorff also was present when mamma put on jewels from the Crown regalia, watched and noted down the stones which she decided to use. With all the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes showing, he would make mamma laugh with his droll remarks, so that her soft cheeks filled with lovely little dimples. But her laugh was full of art and grace, and she looked in the glass as she laughed, as if she were practising it.
People said that Slav blood flowed in her veins, and that it was that which gave the sweet radiance to her deep-blue eyes and the night of her raven hair. Klaus Heinrich was like her, so he heard people say, in that he too had steel-blue eyes with dark hair, while Albrecht and Ditlinde were fair, just as papa had been before his hair turned grey. But he was far from handsome, owing to the breadth of his cheek-bones, and especially to his left hand, which mamma was always reminding him to hide adroitly, in the side-pocket of his coat, behind his back, or under the breast of his jacket—especially when his affectionate impulses prompted him to throw both his arms round her. Her look was cold when she bade him mind his hand.
He saw her as she was in the picture in the Marble Hall: in a short silk dress with lace flounces and long gloves, which showed only a glimpse of her ivory arm under her puffed sleeves, a diadem in the night of her hair, her stately form erect, a smile of cool perfection on her strangely hard lips—and behind her the metallic-blue wheel of a peacock's tail. Her face was soft, but its beauty made it stern, and it was easy to see that her heart too was stern and absorbed in her beauty. She slept far into the day when a ball or party was in prospect, and ate only yolks of eggs, so as not to overload herself. Then in the evening she was radiant as she walked on papa's arm along the prescribed path through the halls—grey-haired dignitaries blushed when they were addressed by her, and the Courier reported that it was not only because of her exalted rank that her Royal Highness had been the queen of the ball. Yes, people felt happier for the sight of her, whether it was at the Court or outside in the streets, or in the afternoon driving or riding in the park—and their cheeks kindled. Flowers and cheers met her, all hearts went out to her, and it was clear that the people in cheering her were cheering themselves, and that their glad cries meant that they were cheered and elevated by the sight of her. But Klaus Heinrich knew well that mamma had spent long, anxious hours on her beauty, that there was practice and method in her smiles and greetings, and that her own pulse beat never the quicker for anything or anyone.
Did she love anyone—himself, Klaus Heinrich, for instance, for all his likeness to her? Why, of course she did, when she had time to, even when she coldly reminded him of his hand. But it seemed as if she reserved any expression or sign of her tender feelings for occasions when lookers-on were present who were likely to be edified by them. Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde did not often come into contact with their mother, chiefly because they, unlike Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, for some time past, did not have their meals at their parents' table, but apart with the Swiss governess; and when they were summoned to mamma's boudoir, which happened once a week, the interview consisted in a few casual questions and polite answers—giving no scope for displays of feeling, while its whole drift seemed to be the proper way to sit in an arm-chair with a teacup full of milk.
But at the concerts which took place in the Marble Hall every other Thursday under the name of "The Grand Duchess's Thursdays," and were so arranged that the Court sat at little gilt-legged velvet-covered tables, while the leading tenor Schramm from the Court Theatre, accompanied by an orchestra, sang so lustily that the veins swelled on his bald temples—at the concerts Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde, in their best clothes, were sometimes allowed in the Hall for one song and the succeeding pause, when mamma showed how fond she was of them, showed it to them and to everybody else in so heartfelt and expressive a way that nobody could have any doubt about it. She summoned them to the table at which she sat, and told them with a happy smile to sit beside her, laid their cheeks on her shoulders or bosom, looked at them with a soft, soulful look in her eyes and kissed them both on forehead and mouth. Then the ladies bent their heads and their eyelids quivered, while the men slowly nodded and bit their lips in order, in manly wise, to restrain their emotion.… Yes, it was beautiful, and the children felt they had their share in the effect, which was greater than anything Schramm the singer could procure with his most inspired notes, and nestled close to mamma. For Klaus Heinrich at least realized that it was in the nature of things, no business of ours, to have a simple feeling and to be made happy by it, but that it was our duty to make our tenderness visible to the Hall and to exhibit it, that the hearts of our guests might swell.
Occasionally the people outside in the town and park also were allowed to see that mamma loved us. For while Albrecht drove or rode—bad rider though he was—with the Grand Duke early in the morning, Klaus Heinrich and Ditlande had from time to time to take turns at accompanying mamma on her drives, which took place in the spring and autumn at the time of the afternoon promenade, with Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen in attendance. Klaus Heinrich was a little excited and feverish before these drives, to which unfortunately no enjoyment, but on the contrary a great deal of trouble and effort attached. For, directly the open carriage came out through the Lions Gate on to the Albrechtsplatz, past the grenadiers at the "present," there were a lot of people collected, waiting for it—men, women, and children, who shouted and stared full of curiosity; and that meant pulling oneself together, sitting up erect, smiling, hiding the left hand, and saluting in such a way as to make the people happy. And so it went on right through the city and the fields. Other vehicles were obliged to keep away from ours; the police looked to that. But the foot-passengers stood on the kerb, the women curtseyed, the men took off their hats and looked with eyes full of devotion and importunate curiosity,—and this was the impression Klaus Heinrich got: that they all were there just to be there and to stare, while he was there to show himself and to be stared at; and his was far the harder part. He kept his left hand in his coat-pocket and smiled as mamma wished him to, while he felt that his cheeks were aglow. But the Courier reported that the rosy redness of our little duke's cheeks showed what a healthy boy he was.
Klaus Heinrich was thirteen years old when he stood at the solitary mother-of-pearl table in the middle of the cold silver hall, and tried to probe the reality of things around him. And as he scrutinized the various phenomena: the empty, torn pride of the room, aimless and uncomfortable, the symmetry of the white candles, which seemed to express awe and tension and discreet self-obliteration, the passing shadow on his father's face when anybody ad dressed him unasked, the cool and calculated beauty of his mother, whose one object was admiration, the devoted and importunately curious gaze of the people outside— then a suspicion seized him, a vague and approximate conception of his situation. But simultaneously horror seized him, terror at such a destiny, a dread of his "exalted calling," so strong that he turned round and covered his eyes with both his hands—both, the little wrinkled left one too—and sank down at the lonely table and cried, cried from sympathy with himself and his heart—till they came, and wrung their hands and turned their eyes up to heaven and questioned him, and led him away.… He gave out that he had been frightened, and that was quite true.
He had known nothing, understood nothing, suspected nothing of the difficulty and sternness of the life prescribed for him; he had been merry and careless, and had given his guardians many a scare. But there was no resisting the impressions which soon came thronging upon him and forcing him to open his eyes to the real state of things. In the northern suburbs, not far from the spa-gardens, a new road had been opened: people told him that the City Council had decided to call it "Klaus Heinrich Strasse." Once when driving out his mother and he called at a picture-dealer's, they wanted to buy something. The footman waited at the carriage door, the public gathered round, the picture-dealer bustled about—there was nothing new in all that. But Klaus Heinrich for the first time noticed his photograph in the shop window. It was hanging next those of artists and great men, men with lofty brows, with a look of the loneliness of fame in their eyes.
People were satisfied with him on the whole. He gained dignity with years, and self-possession under the pressure of his exalted calling. But the strange thing was that his longing increased at the same time: that roving inquisitiveness which Schulrat Dröge was not the man to satisfy, and which had impelled him to chat with the lackeys. He had given up doing that; it did not lead to anything. They smiled at him, confirming him by that very laugh in the suspicion that his world of the symmetrically marshalled candles presented an unconscious antithesis to the world outside, but they were no manner of help to him. He looked round about him on the expeditions, in the walks he took through the town gardens with Ditlinde and the Swiss governess, followed by a lackey. He felt that if they were all of one mind to stare at him, while he was all alone and made conspicuous just to be stared at, he also had no share in their being and doing. He realized that they presumably were not always as he saw them, when they stood and greeted him with deferential looks; that it must be his birth and upbringing which made their looks deferential, and that it was with them as with the children when they heard about fairy princes, and were thereby refined and elevated above their work-a-day selves. But he did not know what they looked like and were when they were not refined and elevated above their work-a-day selves—his "exalted calling" concealed this from him, and it was a dangerous and improper wish to allow his heart to be moved by things which his exaltedness concealed from him. And yet he wished it, he wished it from a jealousy and that roving inquisitiveness which sometimes drove him to undertake voyages of exploration into unknown regions of the old Schloss, with Ditlinde his sister, when the opportunity offered.
They called it "rummaging," and great was the charm of "rummaging"; for it was difficult to acquire familiarity with the ground-plan and structure of the old Schloss, and every time they penetrated far enough into the remoter parts they found rooms, closets, and empty halls which they had not yet trodden, or strange round-about ways to already-known rooms. But once when thus wandering about they had a rencontre, an adventure befell them, which made a great impression on Klaus Heinrich, though he did not show it, and opened his eyes.
The opportunity came. While the Swiss governess was absent on leave to attend the evening service, they had drunk their milk from tea-cups with the Grand Duchess, accompanied by two ladies-in-waiting, had been dismissed and directed to go back hand-in-hand to their ordinary occupations in the nursery, which lay not far off. It was thought that they needed nobody to go with them; Klaus Heinrich was old enough to take care of Ditlinde, of course. He was; and in the corridor he said: "Yes, Ditlinde, we will certainly go back to the nursery, but we need not go, you know, the shortest, dullest way. We'll rummage a bit first. If you go up one step and follow the corridor as far as where the arches begin, you'll find a hall with pillars behind them, and if you go out of one of the doors of the hall with pillars—clamber up the corkscrew staircase, you come to a room with a wooden roof; and there are lots of funny things lying about there. But I don't know what comes after the room, and that's what we've got to find out. So let's go."
"Yes, let's," said Ditlinde, "but not too far, Klaus Heinrich, and not where it's too dusty, for this dress shows everything."
She was wearing a dress of dark-red velvet, trimmed with satin of the same colour. She had at that time dimples in her elbows, and light golden hair, that curled round her ears like ram's horns. In after years she was pale and thin. She too had the broad, rather over-prominent cheek-bones of her father and nation, but they were not accentuated, so that they did not spoil the lines of her face. But with Klaus Heinrich they were strong and emphatic, so that they seemed somewhat to encroach upon, to narrow and to lengthen his steel-coloured eyes. His dark hair was smoothly parted, cut in a careful rectangle on the temples, and brushed straight back from the forehead. He wore an open jacket with a waistcoat buttoning at the throat and a white turn-down collar. In his right hand he held Ditlinde's little hand, but his left arm hung down, with its brown, wrinkled, and undeveloped hand, thin and short from the shoulder. He was glad that he could let it hang without bothering to conceal it; for there was nobody there to stare and to require to be elevated and inspired, and he himself might stare and examine to his heart's content.
So they went and rummaged as they liked. Quiet reigned in the corridors, and they saw hardly a lackey in the distance. They climbed up a staircase and followed the passage till they came to the arches, showing that they were in the part of the Schloss which dated from the time of John the Headstrong and Heinrich the Confessor, as Klaus Heinrich knew and explained. They came to the hall of the pillars, and Klaus Heinrich there whistled several notes close after each other, for the first were still sounding when the last came, and so a clear chord rang under the vaulted ceiling. They scrambled groping and often on hands and knees up the stone winding staircase which opened behind one of the heavy doors, and reached the room with the wooden ceiling, in which there were several strange objects. There were some broken muskets of clumsy size with thickly rusted locks, which had been too bad for the museum, and a discarded throne with torn red velvet cushions, short wide-splayed lion-legs, and cupids hovering over the chair-back, bearing a crown. Then there was a wicked-looking, dusty, cage-like, and horribly interesting thing, which intrigued them much and long. If they were not quite mistaken, it was a rat-trap, for they could see the iron spike to put the bacon on, and it was dreadful to think how the trap-door must fall down behind the great beast.… Yes, this took time, and when they stood up after examining the rat-trap their faces were hot, and their clothes stiff with rust and dust. Klaus Heinrich brushed them both down, but that did not do much good, for his hands were as filthy as the clothes. And suddenly they saw that dusk had begun to fall. They must return quickly, Ditlinde insisted anxiously on that; it was too late to go any farther.
"That's an awful pity," said Klaus Heinrich. "Who knows what else we mightn't have found, and when we shall get another chance of rummaging, Ditlinde!" But he followed his sister and they hurried back down the turret-stairs, crossed the hall of the pillars, and came out into the arcade, intending to hurry home hand-in-hand.
Thus they wandered on for a time; but Klaus Heinrich shook his head, for it seemed to him that this was not the way he had come. They went still farther; but several signs told them that they had mistaken their direction. This stone seat with the griffin-heads was not standing here before. That pointed window looked to the west over the low-lying quarter of the town and not over the inner courtyard with the rose-bush. They were going wrong, it was no use denying it; perhaps they had left the hall of the pillars by a wrong exit—anyhow they had absolutely lost their way.
They went back a little, but their disquietude would not allow them to go very far back, so they turned right about again, and decided to push on the way they had already come, and to trust to luck. Their way lay through a damp, stuffy atmosphere, and great undisturbed cobwebs stretched across the corners; they went with heavy hearts, and Ditlinde especially was full of repentance and on the brink of tears. People would notice her absence, would "look sadly" at her, perhaps even tell the Grand Duke; they would never find the way, would be forgotten and die of hunger. And where there was a rat-trap, Klaus Heinrich, there were also rats.… Klaus Heinrich comforted her. They only had to find the place where the armour and crossed standards hung; from that point he was quite sure of the direction. And suddenly—they had just passed a bend in the winding passage—suddenly something happened. It startled them dreadfully.
What they had heard was more than the echo of their own steps, they were other, strange steps, heavier than theirs; they came towards them now quickly, now hesitatingly, and were accompanied by a snorting and grumbling which made their blood run cold. Ditlinde made as if to run away from fright: but Klaus Heinrich would not let go her hand, and they stood with starting eyes waiting for what was coming.
It was a man who was just visible in the half-darkness, and, calmly considered, his appearance was not horrifying. He was squat in figure, and dressed like a veteran soldier. He wore a frock-coat of old-fashioned cut, a woollen comforter round his neck and a medal on his breast. He held in one hand a curly top-hat and in the other the bone handle of his clumsily rolled-up umbrella, which he tapped on the flags in time with his steps. His thin grey hair was plastered up from one ear in wisps over his skull. He had bow-shaped black eyebrows, and a yellow-white beard, which grew like the Grand Duke's, heavy upper-lids, and watery blue eyes with pouches of withered skin under them; he had the usual high cheek-bones, and the furrows of his sun-burnt face were like crevasses. When he had come quite close he seemed to recognize the children, for he placed himself against the outer wall of the passage, at once fronted round and began to make a number of bows, consisting of several short forward jerks of his whole body from the feet upwards, while he imparted a look of honesty to his mouth and held his top-hat crown-downwards in front of him. Klaus Heinrich meant to pass him by with a nod, but was surprised into halting, for the veteran began to speak.
"I beg pardon!" he suddenly grunted; then went on in a more natural voice: "I earnestly beg your young Highnesses' pardon! But would your young Highnesses take it amiss if I addressed to them the request that they would very kindly acquaint me with the nearest way to the nearest exit? It need not actually be the Albrechtstor—not in the least necessary that it should be the Albrechtstor. But any exit from the Schloss, if I dare be so free as to address this inquiry to your young Highnesses.…"
Klaus Heinrich had laid his left hand on his hip, right behind, so that it lay almost in his back, and looked at the ground. The man had simply spoken to him, had engaged him directly and unavoidably in conversation; he thought of his father and knitted his brows. He pondered feverishly over the question how he ought to behave in this topsy turvy and incorrect situation. Albrecht would have pursed up his mouth, sucked with his short, rounded underlip 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 quietly: "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 scrapie, 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?"