From under her wearily half-closed lids Frau Wahnschaffe regarded her husband coolly. It angered her that he desired to draw Christian, who had been created for repose and play, delight and beauty, into his own turbid whirl. She answered with a touch of impatience: “You have always let him choose his own path, and you cannot change him now. All do not need to toil. Business is terribly unappetizing. I have borne two sons--one for you, one for myself. Demand of yours what you will and let him fulfil what he can. I like to think of mine and be happy in the thought that he is alive. If anything has worried me it is the fact that, since his trip to England, Christian has withdrawn himself more and more from us, and also, I am told, from his friends. I hope it means nothing. Perhaps there is a woman behind it. In that case it will pass; he does not indulge in tragic passions. But talking exhausts me, Albrecht. If you have other arguments, I beg you to postpone them.” She turned her head aside, and closed her eyes in exhaustion. Albrecht Wahnschaffe arose, kissed her hand with the same gallant gesture, and went out. But her saying that she had borne one son for him and one for herself embittered him a little against his wife, whom he commonly regarded as an inviolable being of finer stuff. Why did I build all this? he asked himself, as he slowly passed through the magnificent halls. It was more difficult for him to approach Christian than a member of the ministry or a distinguished foreigner. He vacillated between issuing a request and a command. He was not sure of his authority, and even less of any friendly understanding. But while he was spending a few days of rest and recreation in the family’s ancestral house at Würzburg, he sent a message to Christian, and begged him for an interview. XIII Crammon wrote to Christian. It was his humour to affect an archaic manner of speech: “Most Honoured and Worthy Friend: With deep satisfaction I learn that your Worship has ruefully returned to the god Dionysos, and as a sign thereof laid down upon his altar a jewel, whose price has caused the teeth of the Philistines in the land to rattle, and their lame digestions to work with unwelcome swiftness. Your servant, the undersigned, did, on the contrary, when the news of happy augury came to him, perform a dance in his lonely closet, which so shocked the ladies of his palace that they at once called up psychiatrists on the telephone. Thus the world, barren of understanding, is incapable of great reflections.