Courts and courtiers -- Fiction; German fiction -- Translations into English; Germany -- Fiction
It remarked a couple of times that his Royal Highness Prince Klaus
Heinrich, when walking through the promenade after a performance at the
Court Theatre, had stopped for a moment at the Spoelmanns' box to greet
the ladies. And in its report of the fancy-dress charity bazaar, which
took place in the middle of January in the Town Hall--a smart function,
in which Miss Spoelmann, at the urgent request of the Committee, acted
as seller--no small space was devoted to describing how Prince Klaus
Heinrich, when the Court was making a round of the bazaar, had stopped
before Miss Spoelmann's stall, how he had bought a piece or two of fancy
glass (for Miss Spoelmann was selling porcelain and glass), and had
lingered a good eight or ten minutes at her stall. It said nothing about
the topic of the conversation. And yet it had not been without
importance.
The Court (with the exception of Albrecht) had appeared in the Town Hall
about noon. When Klaus Heinrich, with his newly bought pieces of glass
in tissue paper on his knee, drove back to the "Hermitage," he had
announced his intention of visiting Delphinenort and inspecting the
Schloss in its renovated state, on the same occasion viewing Mr.
Spoelmann's collection of glass. For three or four old pieces of glass
had been included in Miss Spoelmann's stock which her father himself had
given to the bazaar out of his collection, and one of them Klaus
Heinrich had bought.
He saw himself again in a semicircle of people, stared at, alone, in
front of Miss Spoelmann, and separated from her by the stall-counter,
with its vases, jugs, its white and coloured groups of porcelain. He saw
her in her red fancy dress, which, made in one piece, clung close to her
neat though childish figure, while it exposed dark shoulders and arms,
which were round and firm and yet like those of a child just by the
wrist. He saw the gold ornament, half garland and half diadem, in the
jet of her billowy hair, that showed a tendency to fall in smooth wisps
on her forehead, her big, black, inquiring eyes in the pearly-white
face, her full and tender mouth, pouting with habitual scorn when she
spoke--and round about her in the great vaulted hall had been the scent
of firs and a babel of noise, music, the clash of gongs, laughter, and
the cries of sellers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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