by Thomas Mann
Klaus Heinrich looked out at the mist. His look was still sealed: but though he sat on the hard sofa in his usual stiff, upright attitude, his feet crossed, his right hand over his left, and the upper part of his body turned towards Herr von Knobelsdorff, yet inwardly his stiffness relaxed at this juncture, and, worn out as he was by his strangely ineffectual struggle, it did not want much more to make his eyes fill with tears. He was so lonely, so destitute of counsellors. Dr. Ueberbein had recently kept far away from the “Hermitage.” … Klaus Heinrich merely said: “Ah, Excellency, that would take us too far.”
But Herr von Knobelsdorff answered: “Too far? No, your Royal Highness need not be afraid of being too prolix. I confess that my knowledge of your Royal Highness’s experiences is greater than I allowed to appear just now. Your Royal Highness can scarcely have anything new to tell me, apart from those refinements and details which rumour can never collect. But if it might comfort your Royal Highness to open his heart to an old servant, who carried you in his arms … perhaps I might not be quite incapable of standing by your Royal Highness in word and deed.”
And then it happened that something gave way in Klaus Heinrich’s bosom, and poured out in a stream of confession: he told Herr von Knobelsdorff the whole story. He told it as one tells when the heart is full and everything comes tumbling out all at once through the lips; according to no plan, no chronological order, and with undue emphasis on unessentials, but with a burst of passion, and with that concreteness which is the product of passionate observation. He began in the middle, jumped unexpectedly to the beginning, hurried on to the conclusion (which did not exist), tumbled over himself, and more than once hesitated and stuck fast.
But Herr von Knobelsdorff’s fore-knowledge made the review easier for him, enabled him by slipping in suggestive questions to float the ship again. And at last the picture of Klaus Heinrich’s experiences with all their characters and leading actors, with the figures of Samuel Spoelmann, of the crazy Countess Löwenjoul, even of the collie, Percival, and especially that of Imma Spoelmann, with all its contrariness, lay there complete and full, ready to be discussed. The piece of oil-silk was referred to in full detail, for Herr von Knobelsdorff seemed to attach importance to it. Nothing was omitted, from the impressive incident at the changing of the guard to the last intimate and distressing struggles on horseback and on foot.
Klaus Heinrich was much wrought up when he finished, and his steel-blue eyes in the national cheek-bones were full of tears. He had left the sofa, thereby forcing Herr von Knobelsdorff also to get up, and wished on account of the heat to open the glass door into the little veranda, but Herr von Knobelsdorff stopped this by calling attention to the risk of a chill. He begged the Prince humbly to sit down again, as his Royal Highness could not conceal from himself the need for a calm discussion of the state of affairs. And both sat down again on the thinly cushioned sofa.
Herr von Knobelsdorff meditated awhile, and his face was as serious as it ever could be with his dimpled chin and the play of his eye-wrinkles. Then, breaking silence, he thanked the Prince with emotion for the great honour he had shown him by confiding in him. And in direct connexion with this Herr von Knobelsdorff, emphasizing each word, announced that whatever attitude the Prince had expected him, Herr von Knobelsdorff, to assume at this juncture, he, Herr von Knobelsdorff, was certainly not the man to oppose the wishes and hopes of the Prince, but much rather to show his Royal Highness the way to the longed-for goal to the best of his power.
Long silence ensued. Klaus Heinrich looked rapturously at Herr von Knobelsdorff’s eyes with the fan-like wrinkles. Had he these wishes and hopes? Was there a goal? He was not sure of his ears. He said: “Your Excellency is kind enough …”
Then Herr von Knobelsdorff added to his declaration a condition, and said: Frankly, on one condition only did he, as first official of the State, dare to exercise his modest influence on behalf of his Royal Highness.
“On one condition?”
“On condition that your Royal Highness does not take account only of your own happiness in a selfish and frivolous way, but, as your lofty calling demands, regards your personal destiny from the point of view of the Mass, the Whole.”
Klaus Heinrich was silent, and his eyes were heavy in thought.
“Perhaps your Royal Highness,” continued Herr von Knobelsdorff after a pause, “will allow me to leave this delicate and yet quite unavoidable topic for a while, and to turn to more general matters! This is the hour of confidence and mutual understanding … I respectfully beg to be allowed to take advantage of it. Your Royal Highness is through your exalted position cut off from rude actuality, severed from it by delicate precautions. I shall not forget that this actuality is not—or only at second-hand—a matter for your Royal Highness. And yet the moment seems to me to have come for bringing at least a certain portion of this rude world to the immediate notice of your Royal Highness, entirely for your own sake. I plead beforehand for forgiveness, if I chance to stir up your Royal Highness’s emotions too harshly by what I tell you.”
“Please speak on, Excellency,” said Klaus Heinrich hastily. Involuntarily he sat upright, just as one sits up straight in a dentist’s chair and collects one’s natural powers to withstand an attack of pain.
“I must ask for your undivided attention,” said Herr von Knobelsdorff almost sternly. And then, as a corollary to the discussions with the Budget Commission, followed the statement, the clear, exhaustive, unembroidered lesson, well primed with figures and explanations of the fundamental facts and technical expressions, which showed the economical position of the country, the State, and brought our whole miserable plight with relentless clearness before the Prince’s eyes.
Naturally these things were not entirely new and strange to him. Indeed, ever since he had assumed his representative rôle, they had served as a motive and subject for those formal questions which he used to address to burgomasters, agriculturists, and high officials, and to which he received answers which were merely answers and nothing more, and which were often accompanied by the smile which he had known all his life and which reminded him that he was born to be king. But all this had not yet forced itself upon him in its naked actuality, nor made serious claims on his thinking powers.
Herr von Knobelsdorff was by no means satisfied to get a few of Klaus Heinrich’s usual encouraging words; he pressed the matter home, he cross-examined the young man, made him repeat whole sentences; he kept him relentlessly to the point, and reminded the Prince of a dry and skinny index-finger which stopped at each separate place and would not go on until convinced that the pupil really understood the lesson.
Herr von Knobelsdorff began at the rudiments, and talked about the country and its lack of development from a commercial and industrial point of view: he talked about the people, Klaus Heinrich’s people, that shrewd and honest, sound and reliable stock. He spoke about the deficiency in the State reserves, the poor dividends paid by the railways, the insufficient coal supply. He touched on the administration of the forests, game preserves and stock-raising; he talked about the woods, the excessive felling, the immoderate stripping of litter, the crippling of the industry, the falling revenues from the forests. Then he went more closely into our stock of gold, discussed the natural inability of the people to pay heavy taxes, described the reckless finance of earlier periods. Thereupon he added up the figures of the State debt, which Herr von Knobelsdorff forced the Prince to repeat several times. They reached six hundred millions.
The lesson extended further to the debentures, conditions for interest and repayment. It came back to Doctor Krippenreuther’s present anxiety, and described the seriousness of the situation. Suddenly pulling the “Annual of the Statistical Bureau” out of his pocket, Herr von Knobelsdorff instructed his pupil in the harvest returns for the previous years, summed up the untoward events which had caused their decline, pointed to the deficiencies in the taxes, the figures of which he had brought with him, and referred to the underfed ad
ults and children whom one might see throughout the country-side. Then he turned to the general condition of the gold market, discoursed on the rise in the value of gold and the general economic unsoundness. Klaus Heinrich learned also about the lowness of the Exchange, the restlessness of the creditors, the leakage of gold, and the bank smashes; he saw our credit shaken, our paper valueless, and grasped to the full that the raising of a new loan was almost impossible.
The night was closing in, it was long past five, when Herr von Knobelsdorff ended his statement of the national economics. At this time Klaus Heinrich usually had his tea, but this time he only gave a passing thought to it, and nobody outside dared to disturb a conversation whose importance was shown by its duration. Klaus Heinrich listened and listened. He scarcely realized how much affected he was. But how could the other bring himself to say all that to him? He had not called him “Royal Highness” one single time during the interview, he had to some extent forced him, and grossly ignored the fact that he was “born to be king.” And yet it was good and stimulating to hear all that and to have to bury oneself in it for reality’s sake. He forgot to have the lights brought, his attention was so much occupied.
“It was these circumstances,” concluded Herr von Knobelsdorff, “which I had in mind when I begged your Royal Highness to regard your personal wishes and plans continually in the light of the general good. I have no doubt that your Royal Highness will profit by this talk and by the facts I have been bold enough to put before you. And in this connexion I beg your Royal Highness to allow me to revert to your more personal case.”
Herr von Knobelsdorff waited till Klaus Heinrich had made a sign of consent with his hand, and then went on: “If this affair is to have any future, it is desirable that it should now advance a step in its development. It is stagnating, it remains as formless and prospectless as the mist outside. That’s intolerable. We must give it form, must thicken it out, must mark its outlines more clearly before the eyes of the world.”
“Quite so! quite so! Give it form … thicken it out.… That’s it. That’s absolutely necessary,” agreed Klaus Heinrich, so much excited that he left the sofa and began to walk up and down the room. “But how? For heaven’s sake. Excellency, tell me how?”
“The next external step,” said Herr von Knobelsdorff, and remained sitting—so unusual was the occasion—“must be this, that the Spoelmanns be seen at Court.”
Klaus Heinrich stopped still.
“No,” he said, “never, if I know Mr. Spoelmann, will he let himself be persuaded to go to Court.”
“Which,” answered Herr von Knobelsdorff, “doesn’t prevent his daughter from doing us this pleasure. The Court Ball’s not so very far off; it rests with you, Royal Highness, to induce Miss Spoelmann to take part in it. Her companion is a countess … a peculiar one, perhaps, but a countess, and that helps things. When I assure your Royal Highness that the Court will not fail to make things easy, I am speaking with the approbation of the Chief Master of the Ceremonies, Herr von Bühl zu Bühl.”
The conversation now turned for three-quarters of an hour on questions of precedence, and the ceremonial conditions under which the presentation must be carried out. The distribution of cards was always left to Princess Catherine’s Mistress of the Robes, a widowed Countess Trümmerhauff, who led the ladies’ world at the festivities in the Old Castle.
But as to the act of presentation itself, Herr von Knobelsdorff had managed to secure some concessions of a deliberate, in fact definite character. There was no American Consul in the place—no reason on that account, explained Herr von Knobelsdorff, for letting the ladies be presented by any casual chamberlain; no, the Master of the Ceremonies himself requested the honour of presenting them to the Grand Duke. When? At what point of the prescribed procession? Why, undoubtedly, unusual circumstances demand exceptions. In the first place, then, in front of all the débutantes of the various ranks—Klaus Heinrich might assure Miss Spoelmann that this would be arranged. It would give rise to talk and sensation at Court and in the city. But never mind, so much the better. Sensation was by no means undesirable, sensation was useful, even necessary.…
Herr von Knobelsdorff went. It had become so dark when he took his leave that the Prince and he could scarcely see each other. Klaus Heinrich, who now first became aware of it, excused himself in some confusion, but Herr von Knobelsdorff declared it to be a matter of no importance in what sort of light a conversation like that was carried on. He took the hand which Klaus Heinrich offered him, and grasped it in both his.
“Never,” he said warmly, and these were his last words before he went, “never was the happiness of a prince more inseparable from that of his people. No, whatever your Royal Highness ponders and does, you will bear in mind that the happiness of your Royal Highness by the disposition of destiny has become a condition of the public weal, but that your Royal Highness on your side must recognize in the weal of your country the indispensable condition and justification of your own happiness.”
Much moved, and not yet in a condition to arrange the thoughts which poured in on him in thousands, Klaus Heinrich remained behind in his homely Empire room.
He passed a restless night, and went next morning, despite misty and damp weather, for a long and lonely ride. Herr von Knobelsdorff had talked clearly and voluminously, had given and accepted facts; but for the fusion, modelling, and working up of these multifarious raw products he had given only curt, aphoristic instructions, and Klaus Heinrich found himself doomed to some heavy thinking while he lay awake at night, and later when he went for a ride on Florian.
When he got back to the “Hermitage” he did a remarkable thing. He wrote with a pencil on a piece of paper an order, a certain commission, and sent Neumann, the valet, with it to the Academy Bookshop in the University Strasse: Neumann came back with a package of books, which Klaus Heinrich had set out in his room, and which he began at once to read.
They were works of a sober and school-bookish appearance, with glazed paper backs, ugly leather sides, and coarse paper, and the contents were divided up minutely into sections, main divisions, sub-divisions, and paragraphs. Their titles were not stimulating. They were manuals and hand-books of economy, abstracts and outlines of State finance, systematic treatises on political economy. The Prince shut himself up in his study with these books, and gave instructions that he wished on no account to be disturbed.
The autumn was damp, and Klaus Heinrich felt little tempted to leave the “Hermitage.” On Saturday he drove to the Old Schloss to give free audiences: otherwise his time was his own all this week, and he knew how to make use of it. Wrapped in his dressing-gown, he sat in the warmth of the low stove at his small, old-fashioned, little-used desk, and pored over his books on finance, with his temples resting in his hands. He read about the State expenditure and what it always consisted of, about the receipts and whence they flowed in when things were going well; he ploughed through the whole subject of taxation in all its branches; he buried himself in the doctrine of the budget, of the balance, of the surplus, and particularly of the deficit; he lingered longest over, and went deepest into, the public debt and its varieties, into loans, and relation between interest and capital and liquidation, and from time to time he raised his head from the book and dreamed with a smile about what he had read, as if it had been the gayest poetry.
For the rest, he found that it was not hard to grasp it all, when one set one’s mind to it. No, this really serious actuality, in which he now played a part, this simple and rude texture of interests, this system of down-right logical needs and necessities, which countless young men of ordinary birth had to stuff into their heads, to be able to pass examinations in it, it was by no means so difficult to get hold of as he in his Highness had thought. The rôle of representation, in his opinion, was harder. And much, much more ticklish and difficult were his gentle struggles with Imma Spoelmann oil horseback and on foot. His studies made him warm and happy, he felt that his zeal was making his cheeks hot,
like those of his brother-in-law zu Ried-Hohenried over his peat.
After thus giving the facts which he had learnt from Herr von Knobelsdorff a general academic basis, and also accomplishing a feat of hard thinking in bringing together inward connexions and weighing possibilities, he again presented himself at Delphinenort at tea-time. The lights in the candelabra with the lions’ feet and the big crystal lustres were burning in the garden room. The ladies were alone.
Klaus Heinrich first asked after Mr. Spoelmann’s health and Imma’s indisposition. He upbraided her freely for her strange impetuosity, to which she answered with a pout that as far as she knew she was her own mistress, and could do as she liked with her health. The conversation then turned to the autumn, to the damp weather which forbade rides, to the advanced time of year, and the proximity of winter, and Klaus Heinrich suddenly mentioned the Court Ball in connexion with which it occurred to him to ask whether the ladies—if unfortunately Mr. Spoelmann were prevented by the state of his health—would not care to take part in one this time. But when Imma answered, “No, really, she had no wish to be rude, but she had absolutely not the faintest desire to go to a Court Ball,” he did not press the point, but postponed the question for the time.
What had he done these last few days?—Oh, he’d been very busy, he might say that he’d been chock-a-block with work.—Work? Doubtless he meant the Court Hunt at “Jägerpreis.”—The Court Hunt? No. He had gone in for real study which he had by no means got to the bottom of yet; on the contrary he was sticking deep in the literature on the subject.… And Klaus Heinrich began to talk about his ugly books, his peeps into financial science, and he spoke with such pleasure and respect of this discipline that Imma Spoelmann looked at him with her big eyes. But when—almost timidly—she questioned him as to the motive and impulse for this activity, he answered that it was living, only too burning, questions of the day which had brought him to it: circumstances and conditions which were certainly not well suited for a cheerful talk at tea. This remark obviously offended Imma Spoelmann.