Royal Highness Part 5

"Thanks!" said the man. "Ever so many thanks for your kindness! Heaven knows I should never have thought that I should live to walk about the Old Schloss one day with your young Highnesses. But there it is, and after all my annoyance--for I have been annoyed, terribly annoyed, that's true and certain--after all my annoyance I have at any rate this honour and this satisfaction."

Klaus Heinrich longed to ask what might have been the reason for so much annoyance; but the veteran went straight on (and tapped his umbrella in regular time on the flags as he went). "... and I recognized your young Highnesses at once, although it is a bit dark here in the pa.s.sage, for I have seen you many a time in the carriage, and was always delighted, for I myself have just such a couple of brats at home--I mean to say, mine are brats, mine are ... and the boy is called Klaus Heinrich too."

"Just like me?" said Klaus Heinrich, overjoyed.... "What luck!"

"There's no luck about it," said the man, "considering he was named expressly after you, for he is a couple of months younger than you, and there are lots of children in the town and country who are called that, and all of them after you. No, one can hardly call it luck...."

Klaus Heinrich concealed his hand and remained silent.

"Yes, recognized you at once," said the man. "And I thought, thank Heaven, thought I, that's what I call fortune in misfortune, and they'll help you out of the trap into which you have stuck your nose, you old blockhead, and you've good reason to laugh, thought I, for there's many a one has trudged about here and been guyed by those popinjays, and hasn't got out of it so well...."

Popinjays? thought Klaus Heinrich ... and guyed? He looked straight in front of him, he did not dare to ask. A fear, a hope struck him.... He said quite simply: "They ... they guyed you?"

"Not half!" said the man. "I should think they did, the ogres, and no mistake! But I don't mind telling your young Highnesses, young though you are, but it'll do you good to hear it, that these people here are a set of wasters. A man comes and delivers his work as respectfully as possible.... Yes, bless my soul!" he cried suddenly, and tapped his forehead with his hat. "I haven't yet introduced myself to your young Highnesses and told you who I am, have I?--Hinnerke!" he said, "Master-cobbler Hinnerke, Royal warrant-holder, pensioner and medallist." And he pointed with the index-finger of his great, rough, yellow-spotted hand to the medal on his breast. "The fact is, that his Royal Highness, your father, has been graciously pleased to order a pair of boots from me, top-boots, riding-boots, with spurs, and made of the best quality patent-leather. They're my speciality, and I made them myself and took a lot of trouble about them, and they were ready to-day and ever so smart. 'You must go yourself,' says I to myself.... I have a boy who delivers, but I says to myself: 'You must go yourself, they are for the Grand Duke.' So I rig myself out and take my boots and go to the Schloss. 'All right,' say the lackeys down below, and want to take them from me, 'No!' say I, for I don't trust them. It's my reputation gets me my orders and my warrant, let me tell your Highnesses, not because I tip the lackeys. But the fellows are spoilt by tips from the warrant-holders, and want to get something out of me for their trouble.

'No,' say I, for I'm not a one for bribing and underhand dealings, 'I'll deliver them myself, and if I can't give them to the Grand Duke himself, I'll give them to Valet Prahl.' They looked daggers, but they say: 'Then you must go up there!' And I go up there. There are some more of them up there, and they say 'All right!' and want to take charge of the boots, but I ask for Prahl and stick to it. They say: 'He's having his tea,'

but I'm determined and say, 'Then I'll wait till he's finished.' And just as I say it, who comes by in his buckled shoes but Valet Prahl. And he sees me, and I give him the boots with a few modest words, and he says 'All right!' and actually adds: 'They're fine!' and nods and takes them off. Now I'm satisfied, for Prahl, he's safe, so off I go. 'Hi!'

cries somebody. 'Mr. Hinnerke! You're going wrong!' 'd.a.m.n!' says I, and right about, and go off in the other direction. But that was the stupidest thing I could do, for they had sent me to Jericho, and that's just where I don't want to go. I walk on a bit and meet another one, and ask him the way to the Albrechtstor. But he spots at once what's up, and says: 'Go up the stairs, and then keep to the left and then down again, and you'll cut off a large corner!' And I believe he means it kindly and do what he says, and get more and more muddled and altogether lose my bearings. Then I see that it's not my fault, but the rogues', and it strikes me that I have heard that they often play that trick on Court tradesmen who don't tip them, and let them wander about till they sweat.

And my fury makes me blind and stupid, and I get to places where there's not a living soul, and don't know where I am and get properly put about.

And at last I meet your young Highnesses. Yes, that's how it is with me and my boots!" ended Shoemaker Hinnerke, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

Klaus Heinrich squeezed Ditlinde's hand. His heart beat so loud that he absolutely forgot to hide his left hand. That was it. That was a touch of it, an outline! No doubt about it, that was the sort of thing his "exalted calling" s.h.i.+elded him from, the sort of thing people did when they were in the ordinary, work-a-day frame of mind. The lackeys.... He said nothing, words failed him.

"I see that your young Highnesses don't answer," said the shoemaker. And his honest voice was filled with emotion. "I oughtn't to have told you, because it isn't your business to get to know all the wickedness that goes on. But yet I don't know," he said, laid his head on one side and snapped his fingers, "that it can do any harm, that it can do you any harm for the future and later on...."

"The lackeys ..." said Klaus Heinrich, and took a plunge ... "are they wicked? I can quite well fancy ..."

"Wicked?" said the cobbler. "Good-for-nothings they are. That's the name for them. Do you know what they're good for? They keep the goods back when no tip's forthcoming, keep them back when the tradesman delivers them punctually at the time ordered, and only hand them over days late, so that the tradesman gets blamed, and is considered by the Grand Duke to have failed in his duty and he loses his orders. That's what they do without scruple, and the whole town knows it...."

"That's most annoying!" said Klaus Heinrich. He listened, listened. He hardly realized how much shocked he was. "Do they do anything else?" he said. "I'm quite sure they must do other things of the same kind."

"You bet!" said the man, and laughed. "No, they don't miss a chance, let me tell your Highnesses, they have all sorts of dodges. There's the door-opening joke, for instance.... That's like this. Your father, our gracious Grand Duke, grants an audience to somebody, let's suppose he's a new hand and it's his first time at Court. And he comes in a frock coat all sweat and s.h.i.+vers, for it is of course no trifle to stand before his Royal Highness for the first time. And the lackeys laugh at him, because they're quite at home here, and tow him into the ante-room, and he doesn't know where he is, and absolutely forgets to tip the lackeys. But then comes his moment, and the adjutant says his name, and the lackeys throw open the double-doors and let him into the room in which the Grand Duke is waiting. Then the new hand stands there and bows and says what he has to say, and the Grand Duke graciously gives him his hand, and so he is dismissed and walks backwards, and thinks the folding-doors are going to open behind him, as he has been definitely promised. But they don't open, I tell your Highnesses, for the lackeys have got their knife into him, because they haven't been tipped, and don't stir a finger for him outside there. But he daren't turn round, absolutely daren't, because he daren't show the Grand Duke his back, that would be grossly bad manners and an insult to his Highness. And then he feels behind him for the door-handle and can't find it, and gets the jumps and scrabbles around on the door, and when at last by the mercy of Providence he finds the k.n.o.b it's an old-fas.h.i.+oned lock, and he doesn't understand it and fiddles and dislocates his arm and tires himself out and keeps bowing all the time in his agitation, until at last his Highness graciously lets him out with his own hand. Yes, that's the door-opening joke! But that's nothing to what I'm going to tell your Highness...."

They had been so deep in conversation that they had scarcely noticed where they were going, had gone down the stairs and reached the ground-floor, close to the Albrechtstor. Eiermann, one of the Grand d.u.c.h.ess's grooms-of-the-chamber, came towards them. He wore a violet coat and side-whiskers. He had been sent out to look for their Grand Ducal Highnesses. He shook his head while still at a distance, in lively concern, and pursed his mouth up like a funnel. But when he noticed Shoemaker Hinnerke walking with the children and tapping with his umbrella, all the muscles of his face relaxed and his jaw dropped.

There was scarcely time for thanks and farewells, Eiermann was in such a hurry to part the children from the shoemaker. And with many a gloomy prophecy he led their Grand Ducal Highnesses up to their room to the Swiss governess.

Eyes were turned to heaven, hands were wrung about their absence and the state of their clothes. The worst of all happened, they were "looked at sadly." But Klaus Heinrich confined his contrition to the bare minimum.

He thought: "So the lackeys took money and let the tradesmen wander about the corridors if they did not get any, kept the goods back, that the tradesmen might get blamed, and did not open the folding-doors, so that the suitor had to scrabble. That's what happened in the Schloss, and what must it be outside? Outside among the people who stared at him so respectfully and so strangely, when he drove by with his hand to his hat ...? But how had the man dared to tell it him? Not one single time had he called him Grand Ducal Highness; he had forced himself on him and offended his birth and upbringing. And yet, why was it so extraordinarily pleasant to hear all that about the lackeys? Why did his heart beat with such rapt pleasure, when moved by some of the wild and bold things in which his Highness bore no part?"

IV

DOCTOR UEBERBEIN

Klaus Heinrich spent three of his boyhood's years in the company of boys of his own age of the Court and country n.o.bility of the monarchy in an inst.i.tution, a kind of aristocratic seminary, which von k.n.o.belsdorff, the House Minister, had founded and set in order on his behalf in the "Pheasantry" hunting-schloss.

A Crown property for centuries past, Schloss "Pheasantry" gave its name to the first stopping-place of a State railway running north-west from the capital, and itself took it from a "tame" pheasant preserve, situated not far off among the meadows and woods, which had been the hobby of a former ruler. The Schloss, a one-storied box-like country house with a s.h.i.+ngle roof topped by lightning conductors, stood with stables and coach-house on the skirts of extensive fir plantations. With a row of aged lime trees in front, it looked out over a broad expanse of meadowland fringed by a distant bluish circle of woods and intersected by paths, with many a bare patch of play-ground and hurdles for obstacle riding. Opposite the corner of the Schloss was a refreshment pavilion, a beer and coffee garden planted with high trees, which a prudent man called Stavenuter had rented and which was thronged on Sundays in summer by excursionists, especially bicyclists, from the capital. The pupils of the "Pheasantry" were only allowed to visit the pavilion in charge of a tutor.

There were five of them, not counting Klaus Heinrich: Trummerhauff, Gumplach, Platow, Prenzlau, and Wehrzahn. They were called "the Pheasants" in the country round. They had a landau from the Court stables which had seen its best days, a dog-cart, a sledge, and a few hacks, and when in winter some of the meadows were flooded and frozen over, they had an opportunity of skating. There was one cook, two chamber-maids, one coachman, and two lackeys at the "Pheasantry," one of whom could drive at a pinch.

Professor Kurtchen, a little suspicious and irritable bachelor with the airs of a comic actor and the manners of an old French chevalier, was head of the seminary. He wore a stubby grey moustache, a pair of gold spectacles in front of his restless brown eyes, and always out-of-doors a top hat on the back of his head. He stuck his belly out as he walked and held his little fists on each side of his stomach like a long-distance runner. He treated Klaus Heinrich with self-satisfied tact, but was full of suspicion of the n.o.ble arrogance of his other pupils and fired up like a tom-cat when he scented any signs of contempt for him as a commoner. He loved when out for a walk, if there were people close by, to stop and gather his pupils in a knot around him and explain something to them, drawing diagrams in the sand with his stick.

He addressed Frau Amelung, the housekeeper, a captain's widow who smelt strongly of drugs, as "my lady" and showed thus that he knew what was what in the best circles.

Professor Kurtchen was helped by a yet younger a.s.sistant teacher with a doctor's degree--a good-humoured, energetic man, b.u.mptious but enthusiastic, who influenced Klaus Heinrich's views and conscience perhaps more than was good for him. A gymnastic instructor called Zotte had also been appointed. The a.s.sistant teacher, it may be remarked in pa.s.sing, was called Ueberbein, Raoul Ueberbein. The rest of the staff came every day by railway from the capital.

Klaus Heinrich remarked with appreciation that the demands made on him from the point of view of learning quickly abated. Schulrat Droge's wrinkled fore-finger no longer paused on the lines, he had done his work; and during the lessons as well as while correcting his written work Professor Kurtchen seized every opportunity of showing his tact.

One day, quite soon after the inst.i.tution had started--it was after luncheon in the high-windowed dining-room--he summoned Klaus Heinrich into his study, and said in so many words: "It is contrary to the public interest that your Grand Ducal Highness, during our scientific studies together, should be compelled to answer questions which are at the moment unwelcome to you. On the other hand, it is desirable that your Grand Ducal Highness should continually announce your readiness to answer by holding up your hand. I beg your Grand Ducal Highness accordingly, for my own information, in the case of unwelcome questions, to stretch out your arm to its full length, but in the case of those an invitation to answer which would be agreeable to you, to raise it only half way and in a right angle."

As for Doctor Ueberbein, he filled the schoolroom with a noisy flow of words, whose cheerfulness disguised the teacher's object without losing sight of it altogether. He had come to no sort of understanding with Klaus Heinrich, but questioned him when it occurred to him to do so, in a free and friendly way without causing him any embarra.s.sment. And Klaus Heinrich's by no means apropos answers seemed to enchant Doctor Ueberbein, to inspire him with warm enthusiasm. "Ha, ha," he would cry and throw his head back laughing. "Oh, Klaus Heinrich! Oh, scion of princes! Oh, your innocency! The crude problems of life have caught you unprepared! Now then, it is for me with my experience to put you straight." And he gave the answer himself, asked n.o.body else, when Klaus Heinrich had answered wrong. The mode of instruction of the other teachers bore the character of an una.s.suming lecture. And gymnastic-instructor Zotte had received orders from high quarters to conduct the physical exercises with every regard to Klaus Heinrich's left hand--so strictly that the attention of the Prince himself or of his companions should never be drawn unnecessarily to his little failing. So the exercises were limited to running games, and during the riding lessons, which Herr Zotte also gave, all feats of daring were rigorously excluded.

Klaus Heinrich's relations with his comrades were not what one might call intimate, they did not extend to actual familiarity. He stood for himself, was never one of them, by no means counted amongst their number. They were five and he was one; the Prince, the five, and the teachers, that was the establishment. Several things stood in the way of a free friends.h.i.+p. The five were there on Klaus Heinrich's account, they were ordered to a.s.sociate with him; when during the lessons he answered wrong they were not asked to correct him, they had to adjust themselves to his capacity when riding or playing. They were too often reminded of the advantages they gained by being allowed to share his life. Some of them, the young von Gumplach, von Platow, and von Wehrzahn, sons of country squires of moderate means, were oppressed the whole time by the gratified pride their parents had shown when the invitation from the House Minister reached them, by the congratulations which had poured in from every side.

Count Prenzlau on the other hand, that thick-set, red-haired, freckled youth with the breathless way of speaking and the Christian name Bogumil, was a sprig of the richest and n.o.blest family of landowners in the land, spoilt and self-conscious. He was well aware that his parents had not been able to refuse Baron von k.n.o.belsdorff's invitation, but that it had not seemed to them by any means a blessing from the clouds, and that he, Count Bogumil, could have lived much better and more in accordance with his position on his father's property than at the "Pheasantry." He found the hacks bad, the landau shabby, and the dog-cart old-fas.h.i.+oned; he grumbled privately over the food.

Dagobert Count Trummerhauff, a spare, greyhound-looking youth, who spoke in a whisper, was inseparable from him. They had a word among themselves which fully expressed their critical and aristocratic bent, and which they constantly uttered in a biting tone of voice: "hog-wash." It was hog-wash to have loose collars b.u.t.toning on to one's s.h.i.+rt. It was hog-wash to play lawn-tennis in one's ordinary clothes.

But Klaus Heinrich felt himself unequal to using the word. He had not hitherto been aware that there were such things as s.h.i.+rts with collars sewed on to them and that people could possess so many changes of clothes at one time as Bogumil Prenzlau. He would have liked to say "hog-wash," but it occurred to him that he was wearing at that very time darned socks. He felt inelegant by the side of Prenzlau and coa.r.s.e compared with Trummerhauff. Trummerhauff had the n.o.bility of a wild beast. He had a long pointed nose with a sharp bridge and broad, quivering, thin-walled nostrils, blue veins on his delicate temples and small ears without lobes. He wore broad coloured cuffs fastened with gold links, and his hands were like those of a dainty woman, with filbert nails; a gold bracelet adorned one of his wrists. He half closed his eyes as he whispered.... No, it was obvious that Klaus Heinrich could not compete with Trummerhauff in elegance. His right hand was rather broad, he had cheek-bones like the men in the street, and he looked quite stumpy by Dagobert's side. It was quite possible that Albrecht might have been better qualified to join the "Pheasants" in their use of "hog-wash." Klaus Heinrich for his part was no aristocrat, absolutely none, unmistakable facts showed that. For consider his name, Klaus Heinrich, that's what the shoemaker's sons were called all over the place. Herr Stavenuter's children over the road too, who blew their noses with their fingers, bore the same names as himself, his parents, and his brother. But the lordlings were called Bogumil and Dagobert--Klaus Heinrich stood solitary and alone among the five.

However, he formed one friends.h.i.+p at the "Pheasantry," and it was with Doctor Ueberbein. The Usher Raoul Ueberbein was not a handsome man. He had a red beard and a greenish-white complexion with watery blue eyes, thin red hair, and unusually ugly, protruding, sharp-pointed ears. But his hands were small and delicate. He wore white ties exclusively, which gave him rather a distinguished appearance, although his wardrobe was scanty. He wore a long great-coat out-of-doors, and when riding--for Dr.

Ueberbein rode, and excellently well too--a worn-out frock-coat whose skirts he fastened up with safety-pins, tight b.u.t.toned breeches, and a high hat.

Where lay the attraction he exercised on Klaus Heinrich? That attraction was very composite. The "Pheasants" had not been long together before a report went about that the usher had dragged a child a long time ago, in circ.u.mstances of extreme peril, out of a swamp or bog, and was the possessor of a medal for saving life. That was one impression. Later other details of Doctor Ueberbein's life came to be known, and Klaus Heinrich too heard of them. It was said that his origin was obscure, that he had no father, his mother had been an actress who had paid some poor people to adopt him, and that he had once been starved, which accounted for the greenish tint of his complexion. These were things which did not bear being brought into the light or even being thought of, wild, remote things, to which, however, Doctor Ueberbein himself sometimes alluded--when, for instance, the lordlings, who could not forget his obscure origin, behaved impudently or unbecomingly towards him.

"Suck-a-thumbs and mammy's darlings!" he would say then in loud dudgeon.

"I've knocked about long enough to deserve some respect from you young gentlemen!" This fact too, that Doctor Ueberbein had "knocked about,"

did not fail of effect on Klaus Heinrich. But the especial charm of the doctor's person lay in the directness of his att.i.tude towards Klaus Heinrich, the tone in which he addressed him from the very beginning, and which distinguished him clearly from everybody else. There was nothing about him which reminded one of the stiff reticence of the lackeys, of the governess's pale horror, of Schulrat Droge's professional bows, or of Professor Kurtchen's self-satisfied deference.

There was nothing about him to recall the strange, loyal, and yet impertinent way in which people outside stared at Klaus Heinrich.

During the first few days after the seminary a.s.sembled, he kept silence and confined himself to observation, but then he approached the Prince with a jovial and cheery frankness, a fresh fatherly camaraderie such as Klaus Heinrich had never before experienced. It disturbed him at first, he looked in terror at the doctor's green face; but his confusion found no echo in the doctor, and in no way discouraged him, it confirmed him in his hearty b.u.mptious ingenuousness, and it was not long before Klaus Heinrich was warmed and won, for there was nothing vulgar, nothing degrading, not even anything designed and school-masterish in Doctor Ueberbein's methods--all they showed was the superiority of a man who had knocked about the world, and, at the same time, his tender and open respect for Klaus Heinrich's different birth and position; they showed affection and recognition, at the same time as the cheerful offer of a league between their two different kinds of existence. He called him "Highness" once or twice, then simply "Prince," then quite simply "Klaus Heinrich." And he stuck to the last.

When the "Pheasants" went out for a ride, these two rode at the head, the doctor on his stout piebald to the left of Klaus Heinrich on his docile chestnut--trotted when snow or leaves were falling, through springtime thaws or summer heat, along the edge of the woodlands across country, or through the villages, while Doctor Ueberbein related anecdotes of his life. Raoul Ueberbein sounds funny, doesn't it? The very reverse of _chic_. Yes, Ueberbein had been the name of his adoptive parents, a poor, oldish couple of the inferior bank-clerk cla.s.s, and he had a quite legal right to it. But that he should be called Raoul had been the decision and mandate of his mother, when she handed over the sum agreed on, together with his fateful little person, to the others--a sentimental decision obviously, a decision prompted by piety. At least it was quite possible that his legal and real father had been called Raoul, and it was to be hoped that his surname had been something which harmonized with it.

For the rest, it had been rather a wild undertaking on the part of his adoptive parents to adopt a child, for "Barmecide had been cook" in the Ueberbein establishment, and it was obvious that it had been only the most urgent necessity which had made them jump at the money. The boy had been given only the scantiest of school educations, but he had taken the liberty of showing what he was made of, had distinguished himself to some extent, and as he was keen to become a teacher, he had been granted out of a public fund the means of obtaining a college education. Well, he had finished his college course not without distinction, as indeed it was expected of him that he should, and he had then been appointed a teacher in a public elementary school, with a good salary, out of which he had managed to give occasional doles by way of grat.i.tude to his honest adoptive parents, until they died almost simultaneously. And a happy release it was for them!

And so he had been left alone in the world, his very birth a misfortune, as poor as a sparrow and endowed by Providence with a green face and dog's ears by way of personal recommendations. Attractive qualifications, were they not? But such qualifications were really favourable ones--once for all, so they proved. A miserable boyhood, loneliness and exclusion from good fortune and all that good fortune brings, a never-ceasing, imperious call to be up and doing, no fear of getting fat and lazy, one's moral fibre was braced, one could never rest on one's oars, but must be always overhauling and pa.s.sing others. Could anything be more stimulating, when the hard facts were brought home to one? What a handicap over others who "were not obliged to" to the same extent! People who could smoke cigars in the morning....

At that time, by the bedside of one of his unwashed little pupils, in a room which did not smell exactly of spring blossoms, Raoul Ueberbein had made friends with a young man--some years older than he, but in a similar position and like him ill-fated by birth in so far as he was a Jew. Klaus Heinrich knew him--indeed, he might be said to have got to know him on a very intimate occasion. Sammet was his name, a doctor of medicine; he happened by chance to have been in the Grimmburg when Klaus Heinrich was born, and had set up a couple of years later in the capital as a children's doctor. Well, he had been a friend of Ueberbein's, still was one, and they had had many a good talk about fate and duty. What is more, they had both knocked about the world.

Ueberbein, for his part, looked back with sincere pleasure to the time when he had been an elementary teacher. His activities had not been entirely confined to the cla.s.s-room, he had amused himself by showing also some personal and human concern for his charges' welfare, by visiting them at home, by sharing at times their not too idyllic family life, and in doing so he did not fail to bring away impressions of a most varied kind. In truth, if he had not already tasted the bitterness of the cup of life, he would have had plenty of opportunity then to do so. For the rest, he had not ceased to work by himself, had given private lessons to plump tradesmen's sons, and tightened his waist belt so as to save enough to buy books with--had spent the long, still, and free nights in study. And one day he had pa.s.sed the State examination with exceptional distinction, had soon received his promotion, had been transferred to a grammar school. As a matter of fact, it had been a sore grief to him to leave his little charges, but so the fates willed. And then it had so happened that he had been chosen to be usher at the "Pheasantry," for all that his very birth had been a misfortune.

That was Doctor Ueberbein's story, and Klaus Heinrich, as he listened to it, was filled with friendly feelings. He shared his contempt for those who "weren't obliged to" and smoked cigars in the morning, he felt a fearful joy when Ueberbein talked in his jolly bl.u.s.tering way about "knocking about," "impressions," and the bitterness of the cup of life, and he felt as if he had been personally an actor in the scenes as he followed his luckless and gallant career from his adoption up to his appointment as grammar-schoolmaster. He felt as if he were in some general sort of way qualified to take part in a conversation about fate and duty. His att.i.tude of reserve relaxed, the experiences of his own fifteen years of life came crowding in upon him, he felt a longing himself to retail confidences, and he tried to tell Doctor Ueberbein all about himself.

But the funny thing was that Doctor Ueberbein himself checked him, opposed any such intention most decidedly. "No, no, Klaus Heinrich," he said; "full stop there! No confidences, if you please! Not but that I know that you have all sorts of things to tell me.... I need only watch you for half a day to see that, but you quite misunderstand me if you think I'm likely to encourage you to weep round my neck. In the first place, sooner or later you'd repent it. But in the second, the pleasures of a confidential intimacy are not for the likes of you. You see, there's no harm in my chattering. What am I? An usher. Not a common or garden one, in my own opinion, but still no better than such. Just a categorical unit. But you? What are you? That's harder to say.... Let's say a conception, a kind of ideal. A frame. An emblematical existence, Klaus Heinrich, and at the same time a formal existence. But formality and intimacy--haven't you yet learnt that the two are mutually exclusive? Absolutely exclusive. You have no right to intimate confidences, and if you attempted them you yourself would discover that they did not suit you, would find them inadequate and insipid. I must remind you of your duty, Klaus Heinrich."