V
Next morning Lanny looked out of the window and saw the great Schloss, five or six stories high, its roofs and turrets covered with fresh snow, gleaming like a Christmas card in the light of the newly risen sun. The picture made him think of all the fairy tales and romances of knights and princesses that he had ever read. To a boy who had spent most of his life on the Riviera, the mere presence of snow was an adventure; to put on his big overcoat and the mitts that Kurt lent him and go out and run, and see his breath in the air, and throw snowballs and get tumbled in a snowbank — that was fairyland. To go back into the house and be served Pfannkuchen and broiled venison for breakfast, and be told that it had been shot by Seine Majestät himself — could you beat that for thrills?
The Graf Stubendorf and family were expected on the morning train from Berlin, and it would be better for the guest to see the castle before they arrived. So after breakfast the boys ran up the long drive through the park, and climbed the score of steps to the gray stone building; they were admitted by bowing servants in blue uniforms, white gaiters, and white gloves. There was an entrance hall three stories high, and a reception room as big as a theater. All the front of the castle had been built in the last century, but there was an old part in the rear which was six hundred years old and had been captured and recaptured in some of those cruel wars which Lanny had been reading about on the train.
The modern part was splendid with white and gold woodwork, and walls upholstered in hand-embroidered silk, and furniture with scarlet brocade. There was a great deal of heavy carved furniture, and the general atmosphere of a museum. The old part was the most interesting to Lanny, because there were a tower and a donjon keep, an armor room, and a refectory having a huge fireplace with a black pot hanging on a hook. Lanny wondered if Pan Zagloba had ever drunk wassail in that hall. He hefted huge halberds and battle-axes, and tried to imagine what the world must have been like when men went about armored like crabs and lobsters.
They walked about the environs of the castle. It was as the farmer had said, a town, the old part medieval and crowded, the new parts well laid out. Stubendorf was a Gutsbezirk, and the Graf was a state functionary, which meant, in effect, that he had his own court of justice, police force, and jail; the feudal system combined with modern plumbing and street paving. But this didn't occur to Lanny, who was living in a lovely fairy tale.
They came back in time to witness the arrival of Seine Hochge-boren and family. The great ones drove from the station in limousines; all the servants of the castle, a hundred or two, were lined up on the steps in costumes of long ago, the men on one side, the women on the other. The uniforms of the men bore indications of their rank, while the women had white aprons and lace fichus and white cotton stockings, and wore their hair in plaits down their backs. All were drilled once a week in a system of etiquette complete to the opening of doors.
The Graf Stubendorf was known in Germany as a poet and aesthete, and also as one of the Kaiser's intimates. He was a large man, stoutish and pasty, with a soft brown beard and gracious smile. His three sons were the orthodox military men with shaven heads and mustaches twisted to sharp points; they marched up the stairs in order of seniority, making grave acknowledgment of the bows of the servants. The mother, an elegant lady dressed in the latest Paris fashion, walked behind her sons, and the daughters walked behind her. Of course that may have been an accident; or it may have been because their Kaiser had prescribed the proper concerns of women — kitchen, children, and church — listed presumably in order of importance.
VI
In the afternoon the boys put on high boots and took repeating shotguns for hunting. Kurt's father had arranged it with the Oberforstmeister, an important personage in a green uniform with silver braid; he furnished them a Jäger, who would carry a rifle for their protection. It was not permitted to shoot roebuck or large game, but there were plenty of hare and pheasants in the forest.
They drove in the sleigh, following a wood road, slowly because of the fresh drifts of snow. They passed racks where the deer came to feed; the great stags lifted their heads and kept watch, but made no move to escape. They behaved like cattle, and it didn't seem much like hunting to go out and take post on a wooden platform, with a high-powered rifle and telescopic sight, and have beaters drive such creatures in front of you. When Lanny's father went after game it was in the Canadian wilderness, where the moose were not stall-fed; or out in the Rockies, where mountain sheep ran like the devil, leaping over boulders high up among the clouds.