Courts and courtiers -- Fiction; German fiction -- Translations into English; Germany -- Fiction
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 noblest 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 Knobelsdorff'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-fashioned; he grumbled privately over the food.
Dagobert Count Trümmerhauff, 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 buttoning on to one's shirt. 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 shirts 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 coarse
compared with Trümmerhauff. Trümmerhauff had the nobility 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 Trümmerhauff 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 Stavenüter'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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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