Ivan Michailovitch stopped too. “What shall I do?” he cried. “That is what they all ask. That is what Prince Jakovlev Grusin asked, one of our chief magnates and marshal of the nobility in the province of Novgorod. After he had starved his peasants, plundered his tenants, sent his officials to Siberia, violated girls, seduced women, driven his own sons to despair, spent his life in gluttony, drunkenness, and whoring, and heaped crime upon crime--he went into a monastery in the seventy-fourth year of his age, and day after day kneeled in his cell and cried: ‘What shall I do? My Lord and Saviour, what shall I do?’ And no one, naturally, had an answer for him. I have heard the question asked softly by another, whose soul was clean and white. He was going to his death, and his age was seventeen. Nine men with their rifles stood by the trench of the fortress. He approached, reeling a little, and his guiltless soul asked: ‘Father in Heaven, what shall I do? What shall I do?’” Ivan Michailovitch walked on, and Christian followed him. “And we poor men, we terribly poor men,” Ivan Becker said, “what shall _we_ do?” XIX Judith’s wedding was to be celebrated with great magnificence. Even to the preliminary festival more than two hundred guests had been invited. There was no end to the line of motor cars and carriages. The coal and iron barons of the whole province appeared, military and civil officials of high rank with their ladies, the chief patricians and financiers of Frankfort, members of the Court circles of Darmstadt and Karlsruhe, and friends from afar. A tenor from Berlin, a famous lyric singer, a Viennese comedian, a magician, and a juggler had been engaged to furnish the guests with amusement. The great horse-shoe table in the dining-hall, radiant with gold, silver, and cut glass, had three hundred and thirty covers. The festive throng surged up and down in the marble gallery and the adjoining rooms. Yellow and rose predominated in the toilettes of the ladies; the young girls were mostly in white. Bare shoulders were agleam with diamonds and pearls. The severe black and white of the men effectually softened the gorgeousness of the colour scheme. Christian was walking up and down with Randolph von Stettner, a young lieutenant of hussars, stationed at Bonn. They had been friends since their boyhood, had not seen each other for several years, and were exchanging reminiscences. Randolph von Stettner said that he was not very happy in his profession; he would much rather have taken a university degree. He had a strong taste for the study of chemistry, and felt out of place as a soldier. “But it is futile to kick against the pricks,” he ended, sighing; “a man must merely take the bit between his teeth and keep still.”