Voss’s nerves twitched. “Return? There is no return,” he murmured. “Do you know Ribbeck? Well, I hardly know him myself. I saw him just twice. The first time was when he came to the seminary to engage a tutor for his sons. When I think of him I have the image of something fat and frozen. I was picked out at once. My superiors approved of me highly and desired to smooth my path. Yes. And I saw him for the second time one night in December, when he appeared at Halbertsroda with a commissary of police to put me out. You needn’t look at me that way. There were no further consequences. It wouldn’t have done to permit any.” He fell silent. Christian got up. Voss did not urge him to stay longer, but accompanied him to the door. There he said in a changed voice: “What kind of a man are you? One sits before you and pours out one’s soul, and you sit there in silence. How does it happen?” “If you regret it I shall forget all you have said,” Christian answered in his flexible, courteous way, that always had a touch of the equivocal. Voss let his head droop. “Come in again when you are passing,” he begged gently. “Perhaps then I’ll tell you about what happened there!” He pointed with his thumb across his shoulder. “I shall come,” said Christian. XII Albrecht Wahnschaffe came into his wife’s bedroom. She was in bed. It was a magnificent curtained bed with carved posters. On both sides of the wall hung costly tapestries representing mythological scenes. A coverlet of blue damask concealed Frau Wahnschaffe’s majestic form. Gallantly he kissed the hand which she held out toward him with a weary gesture, and glided into an armchair. “I want to talk to you about Christian,” he said. “For some time his doings have worried me. He drifts and drifts. The latest thing is his purchase of that diamond. There is a challenge in such an action. It annoys me.” Frau Wahnschaffe wrinkled her forehead, and answered: “I see no need to worry. Many sons of wealthy houses pass their time as Christian does. They are like noble plants that need adornment. They seem to me to represent a high degree of human development. They regard themselves quite rightly as excellent within themselves. By birth and wealth they are freed from the necessity of effort. Their very being is in their aristocratic aloofness and inviolability.” Albrecht Wahnschaffe bowed. He played with his slender white fingers that bore no sign of age. He said: “I’m sorry that I cannot quite share your opinion. It seems to me that in the social organism each member should exercise a function that serves the whole. I was brought up with this view, and I cannot deny it in favour of Christian. I am not inclined to quarrel with his mere expenditure of money, though he has exceeded his budget considerably during the last few months. The house of Wahnschaffe cannot be touched even by such costly pranks. What annoys me is the aimlessness of such a life, its exceedingly obvious lack of any inner ambition.”