So new, so unwonted was all this magnificence! Ought not all these unexpected, these truly brilliant surroundings to have awakened a measureless joy in Franka, who had spent her young days in the midst of such privations? But why was she so sad?
Ah, yes, if her father had only lived and she might have shared these delights with him, or at least have told him about them....
Joys are like tones—in order to sound, they must have resonance.
CHAPTER IV
LIFE IN SIELENBURG CASTLE
Five months had passed and a cold gray autumn had set in with pallid suns, soggy mists, wailing tempests. As melancholy as the weather was Franka’s mood. Sielenburg had not proved a home for her: she felt that she was a stranger, that she was in exile. Her grandfather, who showed her friendly affection and to whom her heart went out in sympathy, grew constantly worse, so that more and more rarely he summoned her to his side, and when she came, he had but little to say; he merely would ask her to tell him about her past, to describe her early life, and to talk about her parents.
He asked her very little about her present existence, and even if he had done so she assuredly would not have told him that she was wretchedly unhappy; that the great-aunt always treated her with the utmost coldness and reserve; that the insipid conversation of the two other old ladies “got on her nerves”; that the cousin, with his views expressed so arrogantly and dogmatically,—views so diametrically opposed to all that she had learned from her father,—still more affected her, indeed, caused her real agony—all this and much more she could not confide to her grandfather without troubling him, without making him think her ungrateful. Of all the inhabitants of the castle, Mr. Helmer, the young secretary, would have been the most sympathetic, perhaps for the very reason that he was young, and youth feels drawn by irresistible power to youth; but she came scarcely at all into contact with him, because he was rarely present at meals, and when he was, he took no part in the conversation.
Only once had he made an exception to this reserve. At table Cousin Coriolan had spoken about the dirigible balloon: he said: “So then, the thing seems to be feasible.”
“And you remember, Baron,” remarked the priest, “that you have always expressed the opinion that all these aëronautical and aviationary projects were ‘the utmost nonsense,’ ‘crack-brained balderdash,’ ‘lunatic absurdity,’ ‘the summit of imbecility’—I noticed your words particularly—I like your strong expressions....”
“Well, well, Chaplain, to err is human ... but I venture even now to predict that nothing practical or useful will ever come out of them ... only catastrophes.... What would happen if such a monster should fall on the Emperor’s roof at Schönbrunn? ... For reconnoitering in war, it would be extremely dangerous, for naturally the enemy would shoot up at them. The only good that they would accomplish would be the scattering down of explosives—but they would never be able to take any great amount up with them and the mark from such a height would be very difficult to hit—it would be like spitting from the balcony on a nickel lying on the sidewalk, the much-vaunted airship business will in the long run—”
“Make of man another man,” interrupted Chlodwig Helmer, raising his voice. Franka pricked up her ears. “Behind the azure door which has been flung open streams a light, destined to breathe new souls—aerial souls—into new generations of men.”