"We will get the formalities over since you have been told they are necessary," said Frau Augusta, as she reached for my card and folder and, at the same time, handing me her own pedigree.
Peering over the top of the chart that recorded the antecedents of Gustave Schnorr, I saw his daughter going through my own folder with the business-like dispatch of a society dowager examining the "character" of a new housemaid.
"Ah, yes," she said, raising her brows. "I thought I knew the family. Your Uncle Otto was my second mate. He is the father of my third son and my twin girls. I have no more promising children. Have you ever met him? He is in the aluminum tempering laboratories."
I could only stare stupidly, struck dumb with embarrassment.
"No, I suppose not," went on Frau Augusta, "it is hardly to be expected since you have upwards of a hundred uncles." She arose and, going toward a shelf where half a dozen pictures of half a dozen men reposed in an orderly row, took the second one of the group and handed it to me.
"He is a fine man," she said, with a very full degree of pride for a past and partial possession. "I fear the Staff erred in transferring him, but then of course the twin girls were most unexpected and unfortunate since the Armstadt line is supposed to sire seventy-five per cent, male offspring.
"What do you think? Isn't the Eugenic Office a little unfair at times? My fifth man thought so. He said it was a case of politics. I don't know. I thought politics was something ancient that they had in old books like churches and families."
"I am sure I do not know," I murmured, as I fumbled the portrait of my putative uncle.
"Of course," continued the voluble Fran Augusta, "you must not think I am criticizing the authorities. It is all very necessary. And for the most part I think they have done very well by me. My ten children have six fathers. All of them but the first were men of most gracious manner and superior intelligence. The first one had his paternity right revoked, so I feel satisfied on that score, even if his son is not gifted--and yet the boy has beautiful hair--I think he would make an excellent violinist. But then perhaps he wouldn't have been able to play, so maybe it is all right, though I would think music would be more easily learned than chemistry. But then since I cannot read either I ought not to judge. I will show you his picture. I may as well show you all their pictures. I don't see why you elected fathers should not see our children--but then I suppose it might produce quarrels. Some women are so foolish and insist on talking about the children they have already borne in a way that makes a man feel that his own children could never come up to them. Now I never do that. Why should one? The future is always more interesting than the past. I haven't a single child that has not won the porcelain cross for obedience. Even my youngest--he is only fourteen months--obeys as if he were a full grown man. Some say mental and physical excellence are not correlated--but that is a prejudice because of those great labour beasts. There isn't one of my children that has fallen below the minimum growth standards, except my third daughter, and her father was undersized, so it is no fault of mine."
As the loquacious mother chattered on, she produced an album, through which I now turned, inspecting the annual photographs of her blond brood, each of which was labelled with the statistics of physical growth and the tests of psychic development.