Of late these fits had come somewhat more frequently, and had
continued. Often it was a weary, deflowered face that his favourite
mirrors reflected. Yes! people were prosaic, and their lives
threadbare:--all but himself and organist Max, perhaps, and Fritz the
treble-singer. In return, the people in actual contact with him
thought him a little mad, though still ready to flatter his madness,
as he could detect. Alone with the doating old grandfather in their
stiff, distant, alien world of etiquette, he felt surrounded by
flatterers, and would fain have tested the sincerity even of Max, and
Fritz who said, echoing the words of the other, "Yourself, Sire, are
the Apollo of Germany!"
It was his desire to test the sincerity of the people about him, and
unveil flatterers, which in the first instance suggested a trick he
played upon the court, upon all Europe. In that complex but wholly
Teutonic genealogy lately under research, lay a much-prized thread of
descent from the fifth Emperor Charles, and Carl, under direction,
read with much readiness to be impressed [136] all that was
attainable concerning the great ancestor, finding there in truth
little enough to reward his pains. One hint he took, however. He
determined to assist at his own obsequies.
That he might in this way facilitate that much-desired journey
occurred to him almost at once as an accessory motive, and in a
little while definite motives were engrossed in the dramatic
interest, the pleasing gloom, the curiosity, of the thing itself.
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