“And the succession to the throne?” he asked.
“The law,” answered Herr von Knobelsdorff, unshaken, “places it in your Royal Highness's hand to put aside dynastic scruples. With us the grant of an advance in rank and even of equal birth belongs to the prerogatives of the monarch, and when could history show a more potent motive for the exercise of these privileges? This union bears the mark of its own genuineness, preparations have been long in making for its reception in the heart of the people, and your entire princely and State approval would signify to the people nothing more than an outward satisfaction of their inmost convictions.”
And Herr von Knobelsdorff went on to speak of Imma Spoelmann's popularity, of the significant demonstration in connexion with her recovery from a slight indisposition, of the position of equal birth which this exceptional person assumed in popular fancy—and the wrinkles played round his eyes as he reminded Albrecht of the old prophecy current among the people, which told of a prince who would give the country more with one hand than others had given it with two, and eloquently demonstrated how the union between Klaus Heinrich and Spoelmann's daughter must seem to the people the fulfilment of the oracle, and thus God's will and right and proper.
Herr von Knobelsdorff said a great deal more which was clever, honest, and good. He alluded to the fourfold mixture of blood in Imma Spoelmann—for besides the Anglo-Saxon, Portuguese and German, some drops of ancient Indian blood were said to flow in her veins—and emphasized the fact that he expected the dynasty to benefit greatly by the quickening effect of the mixture of races on ancient stocks. But the artless old gentleman made his greatest effect when he talked about the huge and beneficial alterations which would be caused in the economical state of the Court itself, our debt-laden and sore-pressed Court, through the heir to the throne's bold marriage.
It was at this point that Albrecht sucked most proudly at his upper lip. The value of gold was falling, the out-goings were increasing—increasing in pursuance of an economic law which held for the Court finances just as much as for every private household; and there was no possibility of increasing the revenues. But it was not right that the monarch's means should be inferior to those of many of his subjects; it was from the monarch's point of view intolerable that soap-boiler Unschlitt's house should have had central heating a long time ago, but that the Old Schloss should not have got it yet. A remedy was necessary, in more than one way, and lucky was the princely house to which so grand a remedy as this offered itself.
It was noteworthy in our times that all the old-time modesty as to busying oneself in the financial concerns of the Court had vanished. That self-renunciation with which princely families used formerly to make the heaviest sacrifices, so as to keep the public from disenchanting glimpses into their financial affairs, was no longer to be found, and law-suits and questionable sales were the order of the day. But was not an alliance with sovereign riches preferable to this petty and bourgeois kind of device—a union which would exalt the monarch for ever high above all economic worries and place him in a position to reveal himself to the people with all those outward signs for which they longed?
So ran Herr von Knobelsdorff's questions, which he himself answered with an unqualified Yes! In short, his speech was so clever and so irresistible that he did not leave the Old Schloss without taking with him consents and authorizations, delivered to him with a proud lisp, which were quite comprehensive enough to warrant unprecedented conclusions, if only Miss Spoelmann had done her share.
And so things ran their memorable course to a happy conclusion. Even before the end of December names were mentioned of people who had seen (not only heard tell of) Lord Marshal von Bühl zu Bühl in a fur coat, a top-hat on his brown head, and his gold pince-nez on his nose, get out of a Court carriage at Delphinenort, at 11 o'clock on a snow-dark morning, and disappear waddling into the Schloss. At the beginning of January there were individuals going about the town who swore that the man who, this time also in the morning and in fur coat and top-hat, had passed by the grinning negro in plush, through the door of Delphinenort, and, with feverish haste, had flung himself into a cab which was waiting for him, was undoubtedly our Finance Minister, Dr. Krippenreuther. And at the same time there appeared in the semi-official Courier the first preparatory notices of rumours touching an impending betrothal in the Grand Ducal House—tentative notifications which, becoming carefully clearer and clearer, at last exhibited the two names, Klaus Heinrich and Imma Spoelmann, in clear print next each other…. It was no new collocation, but to see it in black on white had the same effect as strong wine.
It was most absorbing to notice what attitude, in the journalistic discussions which ensued, our enlightened and open-minded press took up towards the popular aspect of the affair, namely, the prophecy, which had won too great political significance not to demand education and intelligence to deal satisfactorily with it. Sooth-saying, chiromancy, and similar magic, explained the Courier, were, so far as the destiny of individuals was concerned, to be relegated to the murky regions of superstition. They belonged to the grey middle ages, and no ridicule was too severe for the idiots who (very rarely in the cities nowadays) let experienced pick-pockets empty their purses in return for reading, from their hands, the cards, or coffee-grounds, their insignificant fortunes, or for invoking sound health, for a homœopathic cure, or for freeing their sick cattle from invading demons—as if the Apostle had not already asked: “Doth God take care for oxen?”
But, surveyed as a whole and restricted to decisive turns in the destiny of whole nations or dynasties, the proposition did not necessarily repel a well-trained and scientific mind, that, as time is only an illusion and, truly viewed, all happenings are stationary in eternity, such revolutions while still in the lap of the future might give the human brain a premonitory shock and reveal themselves palpably to it. And in proof of this the zealous newspaper published an exhaustive composition, kindly put at its disposal by one of our high-school professors, which gave a conspectus of all the cases in the history of mankind in which oracle and horoscope, somnambulism, clairvoyance, dreams, sleep-walking, second-sight, and inspiration had played a rôle, a most meritorious production, which produced the due effect in cultured circles.