And so the blasphemous vaingloryings went on.
The War Lord strode over to the long wall of the room, dragging his sword over the marble floor and giving his spurs and medals an extra shake. He pushed a button, whereupon an illuminated map of Europe shot into a frame where, a second before, a Watteau shepherdess had impersonated les fêtes galantes du Roi. Drawing the sword, he delineated with its point the Central Empires, the Italian boot-leg, and Turkey's European possessions. Then he double-crossed France, Russia and Great Britain. "The enemy!" he cried. "Enemies of German greatness, of German expansion, of German kultur—therefore, enemies of the God of the Germans and of mine.
"But with your help I will smash them, pound them into a jelly, Bertha."
As if overcome by horror, the child glided from the impromptu throne of the self-appointed Godgeissel (the Lord's scourge) to the rug, and buried her face in her mother's lap.
"Uncle Majesty," she sobbed, "you mean to say that I must help you make war? The Commandment says, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"
"But the Lord also said, 'Vengeance is mine,'" quoted her Uncle Majesty; "and God wreaks His vengeance through me, His elect, His chosen instrument.
"Still, these matters you will understand better as you grow older," he continued. "For the present remember this: under your father's will, I am your chief guardian, and you must obey me in everything. While nominally, even legally, you are sole proprietress of the Krupp works and their numerous dependencies, you hold these properties, as a matter of fact, in trust for me. It follows, my child, that you must leave the direction of the works to your Uncle Majesty and his subordinates, the directors and business managers. Do you agree to that?"
There was something hypnotic in the War Lord's delivery. As the Baroness explained afterwards, he talked like one possessed. Add to this his necromantic manoeuvring, his Machiavellian gestures, his grandly weird eloquence—inherited from an uncle who died in a strait-jacket—small wonder he prevailed upon the grief-stricken child, when, alternately, he threatened, cajoled and flattered.
As a matter of fact, the War Lord's words seemed to have a peculiar appeal to the richest girl in the world, who neither divined nor imagined their sinister purpose. What pierced her comprehension appealed to a youngster's love of independence, of shaking off mother's leading-strings. In the avalanche of phrases that assailed Bertha's ears this stood out: "Your mother doesn't count; you are mistress in your own right." Very well, she would put the promise to the test. "I don't quite understand," said the Cannon King's heiress; rising from her knees, and without looking at her parent, added, "but I leave it all to you, Uncle Majesty—everything."
"Do you hear?" cried the War Lord, addressing Frau Krupp.