Without paying any attention to these observations, which seemed to him forced in their humor, Chlodwig said:—
“This news moves me deeply ... the poor count ... and the granddaughter ... a remarkable romance!... Where did you read all this?”
“In the ‘Presse’; three days ago the report of the count’s death, and this morning, the will.”
Chlodwig glanced through the papers lying on his table and found the paragraphs.
“Are you not going to condole with the orphan so cruelly robbed of her grandpapa?”
Chlodwig shrugged his shoulders. Bruning’s tone was particularly disagreeable to him to-day.
Franz stood up. “But I must look around a little ... you are charmingly situated.... What a view out over the open....”
From the window he went to the bookcases.
“Look! look!—what a swarm of poets: Stefan George, Hofmannsthal, Dehmel, Liliencron, Swinburne, Rostand... Verses, verses, verses.... Well, as you yourself are a poet, of course you must wade through them all.... I cannot read more than two lines of rhyme at one fell swoop ... everything exaggerated goes against my very soul ... a hundred, or say fifty, years ago, in the romantic epoch, such things were at least permissible; in these days all this seems false to our prosaic world, which is avid of money and power, and it finds no echo. To win the battle, one must force one’s way through with one’s elbows. As far as I am concerned, one may indulge in a little wooing and cooing, but no romances.... And what have you there! Technical journals about airships and the technic of aviation? Does that interest you? I can understand that. The thing can be taken in earnest: a new sport, a new weapon, a new industry....”
“Nothing else?”