Later, when the children had stopped singing, he returned to the song and described it as “sloppy.” “We are all but mortal men,” he repeated. “God bless us, yes, no doubt we are. But on the other hand we ought perhaps to remember that it is those of us who count for most who may be the occasion for especially emphasizing this truth…. Look you,” he said, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other, while he stroked his beard up from underneath his chin, “look you, Klaus Heinrich, a man who has my intellectual aspirations will not be able to help searching for and clinging to whatever is out of the ordinary in this drab world of ours, wherever and however it appears—he cannot help being put out by such a slovenly song, by such a sheepish abjuration of the exceptional, of the lofty and of the miserable, and of that which is both at once. You may well say: ‘That's talking for effect.’ I'm only an usher, but there's something in my blood, Heaven knows what—I can't find any pleasure in emphasizing the fact that we are all ushers at bottom. I love the extraordinary in every form and in every sense. I love those who are conscious of the dignity of their exceptional station, the marked men, those one can see are not as other men, all those whom the people stare at open-mouthed—I hope they'll appreciate their destiny, and I do not wish them to make themselves comfortable with the slip-shod and luke-warm truth which we have just heard set to music for three voices. Why have I become your tutor, Klaus Heinrich? I am a gipsy, a hard-working one, maybe, but still a born gipsy. My predestination to the rôle of squire of princes is not particularly obvious. Why did I gladly obey the call when it came to me, in view of my energy, and although my very birth was a misfortune? Because, Klaus Heinrich, I see in your existence the clearest, most express, and best-preserved form of the extraordinary in the world. I have become your tutor that I might keep your destiny alive in you. Reserve, etiquette, obligation, duty, demeanour, formality—has the man whose life is surrounded by these no right to despise others? Ought he to allow himself to be reminded of humanity and good nature? No, come along, let's go, Klaus Heinrich, if you don't mind. They're tactless brats, these little Stavenüters.” Klaus Heinrich laughed, he gave the children some of his pocket-money, and they went.
“Yes, yes,” said Doctor Ueberbein in the course of an ordinary walk in the woods to Klaus Heinrich—they had drifted a little distance away from the five “Pheasants”—“nowadays the soul's thirst for veneration has to be satisfied with what it can get. Where will you find greatness? I only hope you may! But quite apart from all actual greatness and high-calling, there is always what I call Highness, select and sadly isolated forms of life, towards which an attitude of the tenderest sympathy should be adopted. For the rest, greatness is strong, it wears jack-boots, it has no need of the knight-services of the mind. But Highness is affecting—damme if it isn't the most affecting thing on earth.”
Once or twice a year the “Pheasantry” journeyed to the capital to attend performances of classical operas and dramas in the Grand Ducal Court Theatre; Klaus Heinrich's birthday in particular was the signal for a visit to the theatre. He would then sit quietly in his carved arm-chair, leaning against the red plush ledge of the Court box, whose roof rested on the heads of two female figures with crossed hands and empty stern faces, and watched his colleagues, the princes, whose destinies were played out on the stage, while he stood the fire of the opera-glasses which from time to time, even during the play, were directed at him from the audience. Professor Kürtchen sat on his left hand and Doctor Ueberbein with the “Pheasants” in an adjoining box.
Once they heard the “Magic Flute,” and on the way home to “Pheasantry” station, in the first-class carriage, Doctor Ueberbein made the whole collection of them laugh by imitating the way in which singers talk when their rôles oblige them to talk in prose. “He is a prince!” he said with pathos, and answered himself in a drawly, sing-song parsonical voice. “He is more than that, he is a man!” Even Professor Kürtchen was so much amused that he bleated.
But next day, in the course of a private lesson in Klaus Heinrich's study, with the round mahogany table, whitened ceiling, and Greek bust on the stove, Doctor Ueberbein repeated his parody, and said then: “Great heavens, that was something new in its time, it was a piece of news, a startling truth! There are paradoxes which have stood so long on their heads that one has to put them on their feet to make anything even moderately daring out of them, ‘He is a man. He is more than that’—that is getting gradually bolder, prettier, even truer. The converse is mere humanity, but I have no hearty love for humanity, I'm quite content to leave it out of account. One must, in a certain sense, be one of those of whom the people say: ‘They are, after all, mortal men too’—or one is as deadly dull as an usher. I cannot honestly wish for the general comfortable obliteration of conflicts and gulfs, that's the way I am made, for better or worse, and the idea of the principe uomo is to me, to speak plainly, an abomination. I am not anxious that it should particularly appeal to you…. Look you, there have always been princes and exceptional persons who live their life of exception with a light heart, simply unconscious of their dignity or denying it outright, and capable of playing skittles with the townsfolk in their shirt-sleeves, without the slightest attempt at an inward qualm. But they are not very important, just as nothing is important which lacks mind. For mind, Klaus Heinrich, mind is the tutor which insists inexorably on dignity, indeed actually creates dignity, it is the arch-enemy and chief antagonist of all human good nature. ‘More than that?’ No! to be a representative, to stand for a number when one appears to be the exalted and refined expression of a multitude. Representing is naturally something more and higher than simply Being, Klaus Heinrich—and that's why people call you Highness.”
So argued Doctor Ueberbein, in loud, hearty, and fluent terms, and what he said influenced Klaus Heinrich's mind and susceptibilities more, perhaps, than was desirable. The prince was then about fifteen years old, and therefore quite competent, if not properly to understand, yet to imbibe the essence of ideas of that sort. The main point was that Doctor Ueberbein's doctrines and apophthegms were so exceptionally supported by his personality.
When Schulrat Dröge, the man who used to bow to the lackeys, reminded Klaus Heinrich of his “exalted calling,” that was nothing more than an exaggerated form of speech, devoid of inner meaning and calculated mainly to add emphasis to his professional claims. But when Doctor Ueberbein, whose very birth had been a misfortune, as he said, and who had a green complexion because he had been half starved; when this man who had dragged a child out of a bog, who had received “impressions” and “knocked about” in all sorts of ways; when he who not only did not bow to the lackeys, but who bawled at them in strident tones when the fancy took him, and who had called Klaus Heinrich himself straight out by his Christian names when he had known him only three days, without asking leave to do so,—when he with a paternal laugh declared that Klaus Heinrich's “path lay among the heights of mankind” (a favourite expression of his), the effect was a feeling of freedom and originality which awoke an echo deep down in the prince's soul.
When Klaus Heinrich listened to the doctor's loud and jolly anecdotes of his life, of the “bitterness of the cup of life,” he felt as he used to when he went rummaging with Ditlinde his sister, and that the man who could tell such anecdotes, that this “rolling stone,” as he called himself, did not, like the others, adopt a reserved and deferential attitude towards him, but, without prejudice to a free and cheerful homage, treated him as a comrade in fate and destiny, warmed Klaus Heinrich's heart to inexpressible gratitude and completed the charm which bound him to the usher for ever….
Shortly after his sixteenth birthday (Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, was at the time in the South for his health) the Prince was confirmed, together with the five “Pheasants,” in the Court Church. The Courier reported the fact without making any sensation of it. Dom Wislezenus, the President of the High Consistory, treated a Bible text in counterpoint, this time to the choice of the Grand Duke, and Klaus Heinrich was on this occasion gazetted a Lieutenant, although he had not the foggiest notion of things military…. His existence was becoming more and more barren of expertise. The ceremonial of the confirmation also lacked incisive significance, and the Prince returned immediately afterwards quietly back to the “Pheasantry” to continue his life amongst his tutors and schoolfellows without any alteration.