The liquidation of the national debt had been taken in hand for a time in a clumsy and harmful way. Then under Albrecht II it had stopped altogether. The yawning rifts in the State had received an emergency stuffing of new loans and paper issues, and subsequent Finance Ministers had grown pale to find themselves faced with a floating consolidated debt redeemable at an early date, whose total was scandalously large for the total number of heads of the population.
Dr. Krippenreuther had not shrunk from the practical steps open to the State in such a predicament. He had steered clear of big capital obligations, had demanded compulsory redemption of bonds, and, while reducing the rate of interest, had converted short-dated debts over the heads of the creditors into perpetual rent-charges. But these rent-charges had to be paid; and while this incumbrance was an unbearable burden on the national economy, the lowness of the rate of exchange caused every fresh issue of bonds to bring in less capital proceeds to the Treasury. Still more: the economic crisis in the Grand Duchy had the effect of making foreign creditors demand payments at an exceptionally early date. This again lowered the rate of exchange and resulted in an increased flow of gold out of the country, and bank-smashes were daily occurrences in the business world.
In a word: our credit was shattered, our paper stood far below its nominal value; and though the Landtag might perhaps have preferred to vote a new loan to voting new taxes, the conditions which would have been imposed upon the country were such that the negotiation seemed difficult, if not impossible. For on the top of everything else came this unpleasant factor, that the people were at that moment suffering from the burden of that general economical disorder, that appreciation in the price of gold, which is still vivid in everybody's memory.
What was to be done to get safe to land? Whither turn to appease the hunger for gold which was devouring us? The disposal of the then unproductive silver-mines and the application of the proceeds to the payment of the debts at high interest was discussed at length. Yet, as matters stood, the sale could not help turning out disadvantageously. Further, not only would the State lose altogether the capital sunk in the mines, but would relinquish its prospect of a return which might perhaps sooner or later materialize. Finally, buyers did not grow on every bush. For one moment—a moment of psychical despondency—the sale of the national forests even was mooted. But it must be said that there was still sense enough in the country to prevent our woods being surrendered to private industry.
To complete the picture: still further rumours of sales were current, rumours which suggested that the financial embarrassment penetrated even to quarters which the loyal people had always hoped were far removed from all the rubs of the time. The Courier, which was never used to sacrifice a piece of news to its sympathetic feelings, was the first to publish the news that two of the Grand Duke's schlosses, “Pastime” and “Favourite,” in the open country, had been put up for sale. Considering that neither property was of any further use as a residence for the royal family, and that both demanded yearly increasing outlay, the administrators of the Crown trust property had given notice in the proper quarter for steps to be taken to sell them: what did that imply?
It was obviously quite a different case from that of the sale of Delphinenort, which had been the result of a quite exceptional and favourable offer, as well as a smart stroke of business on behalf of the State. People who were brutal enough to give a name to things which finer feeling shrinks from specifying, declared right out that the Treasury had been mercilessly set on by disquieted creditors, and that their consent to such sales showed that they were exposed to relentless pressure.
How far had matters gone? Into whose hands would the schlosses fall? The more benevolent who asked this question were inclined to find comfort in and to believe a further report, which was spread by the wiseacres; namely, that on this occasion too the buyer was no one else but Samuel Spoelmann—an entirely groundless and fantastic report, which, however, proves what a rôle in the world of popular imagination was played by the lonely, suffering little man who had settled down in such princely style in their midst.
Yonder he lived, with his physician, his electric organ, and his collection of glass, behind the pillars, the bow windows, and the chiselled festoons of the schloss which had risen from its ruins at a nod from him. He was hardly ever seen: he was always in bed with poultices. But people saw his daughter, that curious creature with the whimsical features who lived like a princess, had a countess for a companion, studied algebra, and had walked in a temper unimpeded right through the guard. People saw her, and they sometimes saw Prince Klaus Heinrich at her side.
Raoul Ueberbein had used a strong expression when he declared that the public “held their breath” at the sight. But he really was right, and it can be truly said that the population of our town as a whole never followed a social or public proceeding with such passionate, such surpassing eagerness as Klaus Heinrich's visits to Delphinenort. The Prince himself acted up to a certain point—namely up to a certain conversation with his Excellency the Minister of State, Knobelsdorff—blindly, without regard to the outside world and in obedience only to an inner impulse. But his tutor was justified in deriding in his fatherly way his idea that his proceedings could be kept hid from the world. For whether it was that the servants on both sides did not hold their tongues, or that the public had the opportunity of direct observation, at any rate Klaus Heinrich had not met Miss Spoelmann once since that first meeting in the Dorothea Hospital, without its being remarked and discussed. Remarked? No, spied on, glared at, and greedily jumped at! Discussed? Rather smothered in floods of talk.
The intercourse of the two was the topic of conversation in Court circles, salons, sitting- and bedrooms, barbers' shops, public-houses, workrooms, and servants' halls, by cabmen on the ranks and girls at the gates. It occupied the minds of men no less than women, of course with the variations which are inherent in the different ways the sexes have of looking at things. The always sympathetic interest in it had a uniting, levelling effect: it bridged over the social gaps, and one might hear the tram conductor turn to the smart passenger on the platform with the question whether he knew that yesterday afternoon the Prince had again spent an hour at Delphinenort.