An unusual and unnatural flush mantled in Doctor Ueberbein's face. "Stop it! Stop it!" he cried in his resonant voice, and, in the silence, consternation, and dismay which at once ensued, he walked with long strides up to the Prince, tore away the flowers in two or three grasps, threw the chain and the cover away, then bowed and said with a stern look, "May I beg your Grand Ducal Highness ... "I've been an ass, an ass!" he repeated when he got outside. Klaus Heinrich left the Citizens' Ball in his company. That was the painful event which happened during Klaus Heinrich's year at school. As I have said, none of the participators talked about it; even to the Prince, Doctor Ueberbein did not mention the subject for years afterwards, and, as nobody crystallized the event in words, it remained incorporeal and promptly faded away, at least apparently, into oblivion. * * * * * The Citizens' Ball had taken place in January. Shrove Tuesday, with the Court Ball and the big Court in the Old Schloss, which wound up the social year--regulation festivities, to which Klaus Heinrich was not yet admitted--were past and over. Then came Easter, and with it the close of the school year. Klaus Heinrich's diploma examination, that edifying formality, in the course of which the question, "You agree, do you not, Grand Ducal Highness?" was constantly recurring on the lips of the Professor, and at which the Prince acquitted himself admirably in his very conspicuous position. This was not a very important phase in his life. Klaus Heinrich continued to live in the capital, but after Whitsuntide his eighteenth birthday drew near, and with it a complex of festivities which marked a serious turning-point in his life, and which taxed him severely for days together. He had attained his majority, had been pronounced to be of age. For the first time again since his baptism, he was the centre of attention and chief actor in a great ceremony, but while he had then quietly, irresponsibly, and patiently resigned himself to the formalities which surrounded and protected him, it was incumbent on him on this day, in the midst of binding prescriptions and stern regulations, hemmed in by the drapery of weighty precedent, to inspire the spectators and to please them by maintaining an attitude of dignity and good-breeding, and at the same time to appear light-hearted.