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 nobility of the monarchy in an institution, a kind of aristocratic seminary, which von Knobelsdorff, 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 shingle 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 Stavenüter 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: Trümmerhauff, 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.