At the Sielenburg, 1909.
Dear Cousin and Beloved Friend!
It was a pleasant surprise when your letter, after long wanderings, reached me here. I was convinced that you had entirely forgotten me,—ten long years we had lost sight of each other,—and now suddenly down upon me rains this letter in which you relate to me the experiences which you have been having in all this time and you want to have the like from me.
Oh, how gladly do I fulfill your wish! I am simply hungry for a regular outpouring of my mind. Your twenty pages would make the basis of a fascinating novel: interesting events described in a fluent style. Now, my answer ought not to prove much shorter: I shall devote to it a few hours of leisure, but I shall not take much trouble about polishing my style. “Unconstrained”—do you remember? That was the catchword that we selected at the time when we became intimate friends as students in the same class in the Theresianum. “Unconstrained”—ah! in this word lie whole revolutions, and you know well that I have always been a revolutionist.
Now for my story. I will begin at the very end, that is—this very day. Before I confide to you what I have been doing during these last years, you must know where and what I am at the present moment. My residence is called Schloss Sielenburg. It is surrounded by a great park of twenty acres, and from the window is visible a forest which is my delight. Many trees a hundred years old, and one oak a thousand years old, stand in it, and there are moss and shrubbery and the twitter of birds. That there are still such forests on the earth can console one for the existence of cities and suburbs.
From my window I can see the roof of the stables where there are six pairs of carriage-horses and six saddle-horses. A garage for the automobiles is just building. Among the saddle-horses is a gray with a silken mane, with some Arab in his build and behavior, with such thoughtful and reproachful, and at the same time affectionate, eyes—ah! I tell you there are animals also here below, the existence of which can console us for many of the councilors and aldermen that are their contemporaries! So you may easily imagine how reconciled with the world I feel as I ride on that gray through yonder forest!
I am not master of all this accumulated wealth: castle, grounds, forests, stables, and garages are the property of the Right Honorable Count Eduard Sielen—a sick old man. He exercises his dominion also over a secretary, and that secretary am I.
Now you know—I, the cabinet minister’s son, over whose future career we could not make plans sufficiently ambitious,—to be an ambassador was one of the lowest of my expectations,—am now in a subservient, humble position, am obliged to be forever ready, at my gracious master’s beck and call, to write at his dictation or read to him the newspapers, or anything else. And yet I feel much more free than when I was in the government service, for I can throw up my place at any moment, and the work which I am performing is independent of what I think; it leaves my private character, my personal actions, untouched, whereas in the service of the State the master cannot be changed and one must subordinate his whole “I” to his standards, and only act and work as an unelastic system demands.
No, I could not have endured that yoke. I did not endure it. After completing my volunteer year, I began my regular service under a district chief; once I ventured to contradict my superior, and as a punishment was transferred to a smaller district at soul-killing labor and no living wage; one must practice for some years before one gets a decent salary—I left the service.
In the mean time my parents had died—so I had no need of asking any one’s advice. I was free. I had inherited a small property profitably invested in industrials; this made me independent. I traveled about the world and I have seen a tremendous lot and learned a tremendous lot from my experiences.