VI
THE LOFTY CALLING
Here follows a description of Klaus Heinrich's mode of life and profession and their peculiarities.
On a typical occasion he stepped out of his carriage, walked with cloak thrown back down a short passage through cheering crowds over a pavement which was covered with red carpet, through a laurel-decked house-door, over which an awning had been erected, up a staircase flanked by pairs of candle-bearing footmen…. He was on his way to a festival dinner, covered to his hips with orders, the fringed epaulettes of a major on his narrow shoulders, and was followed by his suite along the Gothic corridor of the town hall. Two servants hurried in front of him and quickly opened an old window which rattled in its lead fastenings; for down below in the market-place stood the people, wedged together head to head, an oblique tract of upturned faces, dimly illuminated by smoky torchlight. They cheered and sang, and he stood at the open window and bowed, displayed himself to the general enthusiasm for a while and nodded his thanks.
There was nothing really everyday, nor was there anything really actual, about his life; it consisted of a succession of moments of enthusiasm. Wherever he went there was holiday, there the people were transfigured and glorified, there the grey work-a-day world cleared up and became poetry. The starveling became a sleek man, the hovel a homely cottage, dirty gutter-children changed into chaste little maidens and boys in Sunday clothes, their hair plastered with water, a poem on their lips, and the perspiring citizen in frock-coat and top-hat was moved to emotion by the consciousness of his own worth.
But not only he, Klaus Heinrich, saw the world in this light, but it saw itself too, as long as his presence lasted. A strange unreality and speciousness prevailed in places where he exercised his calling; a symmetrical, transitory window-dressing, an artificial and inspiring disguising of the reality by pasteboard and gilded wood, by garlands, lamps, draperies, and bunting, was conjured up for one fair hour, and he himself stood in the centre of the show on a carpet, which covered the bare ground, between masts painted in two colours, round which garlands twined—stood with heels together in the odour of varnish and fir-branches, and smiled with his left hand planted on his hip.
He laid the foundation stone of a new town hall. The citizens had, after juggling with the figures, got together the necessary sum, and a learned architect from the capital had been entrusted with the building. But Klaus Heinrich undertook the laying of the foundation stone. Amid the cheers of the population he drove up to the noble pavilion which had been built on the site, stepped lightly and collectedly out of the open carriage on to the ground, which had been rolled and sprinkled with yellow sand, and walked all alone towards the official personages in frock-coats and white ties who were waiting for him at the entrance. He asked for the architect to be presented to him, and, in full view of the public and with the officials standing with fixed smiles round him, he conducted a conversation with him for five full minutes, a conversation of weighty commonplaces about the advantages of the different styles of architecture, after which he made a decided movement, which he had meditated to himself beforehand during the conversation, and allowed himself to be conducted over the carpet and plank steps to his seat on the edge of the middle platform.
There, in his chain and stars, one foot advanced, his white-gloved hands crossed on his sword hilt, his helmet on the ground beside him, visible to the holiday crowd on every side, he sat and listened with calm demeanour to the Lord Mayor's speech. Thereupon, when they came to the request, he rose, walked, without noticeable precaution and without looking at his feet, down the steps to where the foundation stone lay, and with a little hammer gave three slow taps to the block of sandstone, at the same time repeating in the deep hush, with his rather sharp voice, a sentence which Herr von Knobelsdorff had previously impressed upon him. School children sang in shrill chorus, and Klaus Heinrich drove away.
On the anniversary of the War of Independence he marched in front of the veterans. A grey-haired officer shouted in a voice which seemed hoarse with the smoke of gunpowder: “Halt! Off hats! Eyes right!” And they stood, with medals and crosses on their coats, the rough beavers in their hands, and looked up at him with blood-shot eyes like those of a hound as he walked by with a friendly look, and paused by one or two to ask where they had served, where they had been under fire…. He attended the gymnastic display, graced the sports with his presence, and had the victors presented to him for a short conversation. The lithe athletic youths stood awkwardly before him, just after they had done the most astonishing feats, and Klaus Heinrich quickly strung together a few technical remarks, which he remembered from Herr Zotte, and which he uttered with great fluency, the while he hid his left hand.
He attended the Five Houses' Fishing festival, he was present in his red-covered seat of honour at the Grimmburg horse-races and distributed the prizes. He accepted, too, the honorary Presidency and Patronage of the Associated Rifle Competition; he attended the prize-meeting of the privileged Grand Ducal Rifle Club. He “responded cordially to the toast of welcome,” in the words of the Courier, by holding the silver cup for one moment to his lips, and then with heels clapped together, raising it towards the marksmen. Thereupon he fired several shots at the target of honour, concerning which there was nothing said in the reports as to where they hit; next ploughed through one and the same dialogue with three successive men, about the advantages of rifle-firing, which in the Courier was described as a “general conversation,” and at last took leave with a hearty “Good luck!” which evoked indescribable enthusiasm. This formula had been whispered to him at the last moment by Adjutant-General von Hühnemann, who had made inquiries on the subject; for of course it would have had a bad effect, would have shattered the fair illusion of technical knowledge and serious enthusiasm, if Klaus Heinrich had wished the marksmen “Excelsior” and the Alpine Club “Bull's-eyes every time!”
As a general rule he needed in the exercise of his calling a certain amount of technical knowledge, which he acquired for each succeeding occasion, with a view to applying it at the right moment and in suitable form. It consisted preponderatingly of the technical terms current in the different departments of human activity as well as of historical dates, and before setting out on an official expedition Klaus Heinrich used to work up the necessary information at home in the Hermitage with the help of pamphlets and oral instructions. When he in the name of the Grand Duke, “my most gracious brother,” unveiled the statue of Johann Albrecht at Knüppelsdorf, he delivered on the scene of festivities, directly after a performance by the massed choirs of the “Wreath of Harmony,” a speech in which everything he had noted down about Knüppelsdorf was dragged in, and which produced the delightful impression everywhere that he had busied himself all his life with nothing so much as the historical vicissitudes of that hub of civilization.