The second, Lothar, was forever at odds with his income, which never sufficed for his expenses.
"He is sowing his wild oats with a free hand,--a regular spendthrift,--but he gets that from me. I was just like him," the Count said, and laughed again.
And now it was Walter's turn.
In conformity to the wishes of his mother, whose family were all diplomatists and courtiers, he was not destined to enter the army, but was to pursue a juridical career. The Countess already saw in him a future ambassador or minister; the Count regarded him with a curious mixture of compassion and resignation.
"Our youngest child really should have been a daughter," he was wont to say. "Since that's impossible, they are going to make a quill-driver of him. Well, well, there's no help for it. I must make some concessions, and I had my own way with the two elder boys."
Thus, instead of entering a military school, Walter had been placed under the care of a distant relative of the Count, residing in Berlin, where he enjoyed the advantages of the principal preparatory school in the capital, to the surprise of his father's 'good friends and neighbors,' who thought that a first-class provincial establishment would have served the boy's turn quite as well, and even better.
"It is a good thing for Walter to become familiar with the capital, and to feel at home there while he is young," the Countess observed, without explaining, or indeed understanding herself, in what this 'good thing' consisted.
"Let him go to Berlin," thought the Count; "he'll have a chance there to see his brothers and his cousins in the Guards more often than elsewhere; and the deuce is in it if, after passing his examinations, the boy does not 'boot and saddle' and be a soldier. I know I should have done so in his place."
And now the 'boy' had reached this point of his career, and had already been one week at home without uttering a word upon the subject.
"There's not much of me in him," the Count thought, smoking his cigarette, as he watched his youngest son pace the terrace to and fro,--"not much of me; but he's a handsome fellow for all."